Progenitor
by metaldragon868
Summary: Annette Hebert wouldn't call herself Marquis' friend, though they were well acquainted. She didn't know that their acquaintance was the healthiest adult relationship he had. Nor, that it would lead to him entrusting his daughter into her care. Taylor Hebert didn't know these things, but she did know that as much as she loved her big sister Amelia, she wish she'd be less...intense.
1. Chapter 1

Progenitor

Chapter 1

 _"What?"_

The man smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.

It wasn't a particularly mean smile either. It was instead the look of a man who was far from pleased with circumstances that had arisen, but was far too polite to frown or gripe about it.

Considering what he'd given me, I wasn't surprised.

"I assure you, ma'am, everything has been checked and verified."

He wore a dark suit and tie with a white shirt underneath. His glasses were dark and squarish, with an overcoat and hat protecting him from the pouring rain. His skin was pale, and hair a dark brown, but there were the faint hints of dark rings at the edges of his glasses. All in all, he resembled FBI agent from the 80's who'd been running some big case with nothing but coffee for days.

I frowned, looking down at the piece of paper grasped in my hands once more, as well as who sent it.

 _Pompous asshole._

I sighed, letting my hand fall back down to look at him again.

The letter certainly _sounded_ like it was the real thing. The content was definitely how _He_ talked.

 _Still_ , I thought, looking down at the precious packet held by his side.

"…Does she know?" I asked.

"…yes." He hid his grimace well. Given what I'd learned, I felt the same way.

"You piece of shit." I cursed under my breath. "Fucking warned you."

Pushing those thoughts away, I focused on what really mattered.

Crouching down, I brought myself down to eye level with the girl at his side. She had curly, frizzy brown hair and freckles splashed across her face. Red, wide eyes stared at me as she clutched the man beside her like he was her lifeline.

She couldn't have been more than seven, and already her life was torn asunder.

"Hey, Amelia, sweetie, do you remember me?" I smiled, trying to will the clear sadness, the _fear_ , from her form.

She paused, biting her finger in a way that'd be adorable if it wasn't so heartbreaking.

"…Mrs. Ann?" She guessed.

 _Close enough_. "Yes!"

I glanced up at the man who brought her to me. He looked down at the two of us with that same forced polite smile,but I could see it. Swimming behind his eyes, a storm of loss and rage.

Looking back down at Amelia, I brought that same smile upon my face, forcing levity into the situation. "Hey, it looks like you're going to be staying with me for a while. Is that ok with you?"

She hesitated, glancing up at the man beside her. He wasn't her father. No, he was just a go-between. A man with many jobs who worked for the one in charge.

Just a man following orders.

I grabbed her attention. "Do you remember Taylor?"

Her eyes lit up, her head snapping back to me.

"Uh…" she said inelegantly. But I saw it, that spark in her again.

"You know, I was going to make brownies with her tomorrow, you can help us if you want."

She opened her mouth, once more glancing at the man she clung to. He gave her what passed for an encouraging smile.

"I-I would very m-much like that, M-Mrs. Ann," she said, straightening her back as she drudged up half-remembered memories of her father and his lessons.

The all too clear pain nearly broke my heart.

I invited her out of the cold rain. "Why don't you come in?"

"O-okay," was all she said, still glancing at the man who brought her here for approval.

Still, with his nod, she took my hand and stepped up to the porch.

I glanced behind me. The man gave me one last smile, this one genuine, before he slipped back into the shadows of the night. In moments, the torrential downpour had consumed his form.

I sighed, realizing I'd probably never see him again.

"Alright, Amelia. Let's get you out of those wet clothes."

But even as I followed behind, those fateful words ran through my mind.

" _My dearest Annette…"_

" _If you are reading this, then I am dead, or otherwise lost to this world. For all intents and purposes, I am gone."_

" _In my passing, I ask only that you care for my most prized treasure as if she were your own."_

" _You are one of the precious few I trust to do so."_

* * *

"I've outgrown you, Taylor."

"Wha-"

"Get out of here. No one wants a baby like you for a friend."

"But I-"

" _Leave_."

* * *

"Oh man," an African-American girl chuckled, reclining on the bed. "I can't wait till I take you out there, show you the _real_ world in person."

"Y-yeah," her redheaded counterpart said hesitantly. She swallowed, trying to force courage into herself. "I-it'll be great."

"Damn straight," the first grinned. "One day you might even learn to knock some heads."

The redhead gulped.

"Hey," the black one nudged her, "don't worry about it, Emma. You're a natural." She grinned. "A survivor, just like me."

Emma sat up a little straighter, a measure of confidence filling her. "Yeah."

"A-and now that I got rid of Taylor, I can move on!" she cheered.

Her friend shrugged. "Yeah, I guess she did seem like kind of a wimp."

"Y-yeah!" Emma perked up. "I'll be stronger than her. I'll prove it to you, Sophia!"

"Hey, hey," Sophia said as she held her hands up, "calm down. Take this one step at a time."

She smirked. "I already know what kind of girl you are. You don't need to prove anything yet."

"Yeah…yeah." Emma calmed down. "I just…"

Emma didn't know what it was, but something inside her, ever since that day, _burned_ in her heart. A desire, no, a _need_ to be…more, better, stronger.

 _To never be weak again_.

"I just like trimming the fat," she said as she smiled even as a deeper, older, part of her asked _why?_

"Well, trimming the fat _is_ important," Sophia considered. "And if she's as weak as you said, it's not like anything will really happen from it."

She snorted. "She'll probably just go back home and cry herself to sleep."

Emma forced a laugh. "Yeah, it's not like her dad's in any shape to take us on."

Even as she tried to reassure herself, that voice deep inside whispered one question, something she desperately tried not to think about.

 _What about-_

" **Emma Barnes!"**

The two girls shot up, Emma's blood running cold at what sounded uncomfortably like her mother.

" **Come down here right now!"**

Emma couldn't get to the door fast enough. Sophia, an unsettling feeling in her gut, followed behind. What she found downstairs shook her to the bone.

"Emma, would you care to explain?"

There stood her mother, giving her a distinctly unamused look. Her narrowed eyes held Emma with a piercing gaze. Her mouth set into a firm line. Her arms crossed, her posture stiff, and her whole body hovering over the sobbing mess she once called a friend.

For a moment, Emma allowed herself a foolish kernel of hope. As she and Sophia stepped into the kitchen, she felt she could see a glimmer, the light at the end of the tunnel.

"Oh, I'd love to know too."

Emma froze.

Slowly, she dared turn around, her eyes taking a frightened peek at what her ears already knew.

There she stood leaning against the back wall of the kitchen, standing in the shadows. She wore dark clothes, a long brown skirt that reached her ankles and a white dress shirt under a brown vest. The long sleeves and gloves hid her skin from sight. The only bare flesh on her person was her pale and freckled face. Long frizzy and brown hair sat above equally brown eyes. And yet, for all its blandness, there was a certain wrongness to it.

Her eyes were dead and hollow, and yet they seemed to shine with an unearthly light. Her lips were pulled into what even a blind man couldn't rightly call a smile. Her teeth glimmering a bright white in the dark and her fists clenched tight in her crossed arms. There was an itch in her form, like a spring wound tight just waiting to be let loose.

"Well hello, Emma," she said in what could have been mistaken as a friendly tone, "it feels like it's been too long. I hope you remember me. Aunt Zoe certainly does."

How could she have forgotten about Taylor's older sister?

Emma gulped, "I-I don't…uh…what happened to Taylor?"

"Oh?" her mother challenged, a dangerous look in her eye. "You don't know? Because Amelia here has some questions. And, quite frankly, so do I."

"Yeah," Amy drawled, her lips curled in amusement. "You see, Taylor had quite the interesting tale to tell, and, well, I just had to come here myself."

"I mean, I told myself, 'Oh, Emma couldn't have _possibly_ made Taylor cry.'" Her grin turned ever more sinister, sadism leaking into every inch. "'Not after we _promised_ to keep her from crying again.'"

"I-she's lying," Emma faltered, her words crumbling around her.

The girl she admired behind her, the woman she feared in front of her, and the girl who confided in her by her side. All unraveling from at the gleeful hands of the twisted sister.

"Emma," her mother scowled, "come here."

"Bu-"

" _Now._ "

Her tone brokered no argument.

Trapped, Emma glanced behind her, looking to her protector for aid.

All she found was a wide-eyed girl out of her depth.

* * *

"Mom, I-"

"The next words out of your mouth better be the truth, young lady."

Emma stared wide-eyed at her mother. Never before had she seen such anger in her. Never before had she seen such anger pointed at _her_.

"I-I-I…" Emma didn't know what to say.

Lie?

It would never pass, not with her mother's knowing gaze boring holes into her soul. Emma felt like she was being put under a microscope, her every movement, every twitch, every _breath_ up for examination.

 _And I deserve it,_ her darkest corners thought.

Tell the truth?

Shame.

Burning, crushing, tearing, shame. It would be to admit defeat. To admit weakness.

 _I'm not weak!_

She couldn't be. She _had_ to be strong. She survived, right?

 _I'm ok,_ she told herself.

"Is this that new friend of yours?"

 _No no no!_

"Did she put you up to this?"

"No!" Emma shouted. "No, she, I, no no no."

Emma was treading water, the realities of her actions rushing up to meet her.

"Oh?" Her mother stared her down.

 _She can't take this from me!_

"Please, no, I-I'll make it up to you."

"So you admit that you told Taylor off?"

"Yes! Just…" Emma bit her lip, "S-she's…I j-just got tired of hanging around with her. S-she didn't take it well."

"Tired of-?" Her mother recoiled. "Emma, you two have been the closest of friends for as long as I can remember, what on _earth_ brought this on?"

"She's just…a kid, you know?"

"Yes." Her mother looked down flatly at her. "She's a kid, like you."

"Y-yeah, but she's a…a…baby, you know."

"A…baby? What?" She looked incredulous.

Emma, her mind seeing an opportunity, taking confusion over anger, leaped.

"Yeah, she's always crying and babbling and whining-"

" _Emma!_ " Her mother cut her off sharply.

Emma winced, her psyche cracking from the stress of failure.

"Her mother _died_."

"Y-yeah, but-"

"Are you trying to say you wouldn't cry if _I_ died?" her mother challenged. "Because, well, 'that's what babies do', or have I gotten something wrong?"

What could she say?

"God, I raised you to be better than this."

Her world was crumbling around her.

"You've been so different since that day."

 _No, I survived!_

"You've been so…"

 _I'm a predator!_

"So…"

 _I'm strong!_

"…Fragile…"

Emma's world shattered.

* * *

 **Amelia**

"Hey dad!"

I closed the door behind Taylor after she walked through. She looked tired. Hardly surprising considering the day she'd had.

"You home?" I called out.

 _And if I'm lucky…_

"Yeah…" he called back, sounding somewhat distracted. Straining my nose, I could sense the faint waft of tomatoes and meat. "Just setting up dinner."

 _Yes!_ I nearly pumped a fist in victory.

A faint "oh," escaped her lips as Taylor shot up like a squirrel.

"Hungry?"

She blushed, shrinking back down again.

I was happy for her. Sure, dad's lasagna couldn't really compare to mom's, but considering the day Taylor'd had she'd need the comfort food.

When we finally sat down on the couch in front of the coffee table, arrayed around the TV, dad was still fixing stuff in the kitchen.

I glanced at my sister. "You gonna be ok?"

"Yeah," she sniffled, rubbing her runny nose on her too-long sleeves. "I just…"

She trailed off, either unable or unwilling to think of the words.

"You want to know why?" I offered.

"Yeah." She turned those big watery green eyes to me. "W-why'd she do it?"

I sighed. I'd heard everything that Emma and her mom were saying, but Emma didn't actually tell Aunt Zoe the whole story. Knowing Aunt Zoe she'd probably call us, or hell, come up to our door with an apology dessert and explain the whole story. She was good like that.

As for what I'd picked up on…

"It just…" I blew a hot breath out of my mouth, trying to put the words in an order that didn't upset Taylor even more. "She was just…in a bad place, and Sophia, the other girl, was there to kind of…pick up the pieces."

At her trembling lip, I worried I'd said the wrong thing. "Pick up the pieces? B-but that's what friends are supposed to do!."

She looked down, her hands shaking in her lap. "I-I left her. _I_ was the bad friend. I wasn't there when she needed me."

 _Oh, fuck fuck fuck._

"No, no!" I pulled her into a hug. "Look, you were at summer camp-"

"What kind of terrible person abandons their friend for summer camp?"

"You just wanted something else. And you had fun, right? Emma would understand."

"But she _didn't_. And now she's hurting because I left her."

 _Oh god, now she's spiraling!_ I start to panic.

To be honest, I kind of want to deck Emma in the face, knock out a few teeth, and leave her in the street. If she was willing to jump into throwing away my sister's friendship, her _sisterhood_ over a few scratches and a new girl, then she didn't deserve Taylor.

But that's not necessarily a healthy outlook or a response any of my parents would approve of, so I instead focused on helping Taylor.

Because frankly, she needs it.

I'm glad I nipped it in the bud now. Sure, Taylor will probably cry about it for a week or two, feel like complete garbage, _but_ , she'll bounce back. Just like when mom died. It'll be rough, it'll be hard, but she'll recover, stronger than ever. She always does. I just have to keep her from feeling all the pain she doesn't deserve in the meantime.

"Hey," I say as I grab her sobbing face and pinch her cheeks, "you're too cute to worry about this."

"Bu-"

"But nothing. I'm your big sister, which means I know more than you, right?"

"…uh?"

" _Right?_ "

"…yeah?"

"So, if I said you didn't do anything wrong, that means you didn't do anything wrong."

"But I left her!"

"Are you saying I'm wrong?"

"…no…"

"Good," I pull her head into my bosom, pressing her ear up against your heart. "Do you hear that?"

 _Ba-thump_

 _Ba-thump_

"Yeah?"

"This heart beats for you."

She squirms in my grip so you turn her so I can look her in the eye while she listens. "Everything I do is to ensure my precious little sister's happiness."

"So please don't cry," I plead as I wipe away her tears. "Smile. Smile and show us that little sun mom made."

Cheesy as it is, it works. From out of the dark clouds of Taylor's despair shines the bright light of her earnest, if watery, smile.

"He-…ey?"

I look up to see dad carrying one large pan of lasagna, plates, and utensils stacked on top. In turn, he's looking down at us with a questioning look on his face.

"Oh!" Taylor sits up, eyeing the food hungrily.

"Here you go," he says slowly, eyeing my sister carefully as he places it on the table.

Fortunately for the two of us, she's got eyes only for the food. While she's busy, I give dad the universal silent signal for "Don't ask now, tell you later." Which is to say, I give him a grimace of a smile while making a chopping motion across my neck.

He gives me a concerned look for a moment, before returning the grimace of a smile with a thumbs up. "I'll, uh, get drinks…"

Soon, Taylor's worries are forgotten as we enjoyed lasagna, soda, and watching some Sci-Fi about space marines fighting monsters together.

Once dinner and the crisis is over, Taylor is so emotionally exhausted she just shuffles off to bed without a word beyond, "G'night."

Once she's gone, dad gives me a sharp look. It's all he needs.

"Emma basically told Taylor to go fuck herself today," I explain in unflattering terms. Already, I can feel my blood churning.

Dad doesn't even blink at the profanity. "She _what?_ " he says in a dangerously flat voice.

"I already brought it up with Aunt Zoe, who was _pissed_ when she grilled Emma." I let out another hot breath and force myself not to snarl.

"I don't know what happened to Emma but…it kinda looks like she saw something that made her just snap, something her mom didn't know about. Aunt Zoe kept referring to 'that day'." I shrug, struggling to keep my casual air when every muscle in my body is writhing beneath the skin. "Whatever it was, it rocked Emma to the core."

"But, there was another girl there. I think her name was...Sophie," I said, recalling the unpleasant memories of our little exchange. My face nearly flashed into a sneer, but I quickly reined it in. "She _might_ have had a hand in twisting Emma's mindset. She certainly seemed...off."

"Off?" Dad raises a lone brow that asks for more. "I'd rather you not go after someone for seeming 'off.'"

"I'm not going that far." I pout, then pause, reconsidering it.

"Ok," I admit, "I guess I kinda want to break her nose."

"But that's not the point." I shake my head. "I had a little chat with her. She didn't say _much_. She didn't exactly seem too happy about Taylor and I showing up to, uh, ruin her 'thing' with Emma."

"Her 'thing', is it?" he says, a second brow joining the first. "How much do I want to know about this so-called 'thing'?"

I wave my hand through the air to dismiss his idea. "Not like that. At least, I don't think so. More like Sophie was like a…a…" I reached for the words.

"Sports friend," I finally said, "Really into athletics and stuff. And Taylor was like the nerd friend to her, I guess. I think Sophie saw Taylor as the bookworm crybaby and convinced Emma much the same."

"I'm surprised you're so calm about it," he comments

I chuckle humorlessly. "Come on, dad. You know me better than that."

My ribs flex like the limbs of a bow inside me. An errant twitch I let escape shows the tension in my muscles. Dad grimaces at the sight and nods.

"Hmm," Dad grumbles, "I guess there's not much we can do about it now."

"Nope," I say, my expression riding the edge between a pleasant smile and merely barred teeth.

He sighs, raking a hand through his thinning salt-and-pepper hair. "I guess we can only wait till we learn more."

"Yup."

He shoots me a look, the ghost of a smile on his face giving him away.

"Right, well, it's been a stressful night for all of us. I'm heading to bed."

I smile brightly at him, previous worries pushed deep below. "Night dad!"

He snorts. "G'night Amelia," he replies as he ruffles my hair.

I turn to watch his inelegant and tired stride up the stairs, each foot thumping against the wood. The moment I hear his door close, I dash up them myself.

I don't really worry about dad hearing me, he knows what I'm doing. I just waited for him mostly out of courtesy.

Taylor, on the other hand…

I stop before the door to the attic, straining my ears beyond all limits. I search through the sea of sounds of the city, listening to the faint whispers right around me. I hear the shuffling of dad as he fiddles with the blanket. I hear the rustling of the trees outside. I hear birds, fluttering through the trees.

And I hear Taylor, breath steady, heart calm, as she lays in bed.

The coast it clear.

I slip into the attic, careful not to make a noise. I lock the door behind me, making sure that this time is _mine_. Turning around, I face the array of stuff shoved into the attic. A cryptic mess of order and chaos. Everything in its place and every place everywhere. If I hadn't been the one who organized it, I would have been lost. Since I _am_ the one who organized it, I know exactly where to turn. With measured steps that leave not a creak, I stride right up to a certain chest. A large green box with golden trim, it sits innocuously with a large set of three locks.

It takes but a moment to unlock, the keys and codes coming to the mind and hand with practiced ease.

I lifted the lid, the oiled hinges not even making a whisper, and gaze at the precious contents. Reaching within with my arms outstretched, and with delicate reverence, I extract a precious piece.

Two golden eyes stare back at me. A head of mottled gray and brown. A twisted facsimile of a beetle's carapace made into a human head, monstrous mandibles made into a sinister smile. A ring of spikes in an insectile imitation of a crown.

For all its dark appearance and terrifying visage, there is a certain nobility in this helmet. A certain…air of nostalgia, of care with this hand-crafted item.

To some, it might inspire fear or awe.

To me, it brings back bittersweet memories.

"Hey, mom."

* * *

 _A/n: This is my first foray into the Worm fandom, at least in terms of making a fanfic._

 _I've been tweaking this off and on since around abouts Janurary, and I'm only just now posting it. For which I'd like to thank my editors Trav, Zee, and Luna for their aid, though I can't be bothered to remember their FF account names._

 _In case you haven't noticed, there are some significant AU elements. Beyond Annette and Marquis themselves, however, I don't intend for too many other root differences. They are the Nails in this For Want of a Nail story. Other butterflies come from them, but it's mostly a result of Annette being AU, and Marquis being slightly AU._

 _If you have a problem with that, too bad._

 _I have a bit of a backlog for this story, so to keep it up I'll be posting once a week, and attempting to keep that schedule up for however long._

 _Hopefully, all goes well and this doesn't turn into a dumpster fire._


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I took in a deep breath.

Inhaling the scent of the city, I let it's contents shift through my brain. The smell of rust, stone, and the sea all mixing together with hundreds of places, people, and things. All of it combining together to form a flavor uniquely Brockton Bay. The rush of information was a cool breeze to my frantic mind.

 _Relax._

"So, uh, are you sure it's ok for me to go here?"

 _Relax, Amy, relax._

"Because, I mean, I heard that only really smart or rich people are supposed to come here. Like, not even Emma can go here."

 _Just breath in._

"A-a-and w-we're not rich, a-and I'm not smart, s-so the only reason we c-can come here is because of y-your, uh-uh, _dad_ , dad, right?"

 _Out._

"B-but he's not _my_ dad, s-so does t-that mean if I-I'm not good enough, t-they'll kick me out?"

 _Just let it wash over you._

"And what if everyone else thinks I'm-I'm dumb, or poor, or-or"

 _Process it._

"And they probably have, you know, rich and smart people friends. I b-bet they all know each other already. I bet-"

"Taylor," I interjected.

"-yes!" she instantly responded, her head snapping so fast I could practically hear her neck crack.

She was wound up tight, her whole body exuding a kind of nervousness that only a kid on their first day of school could exhibit. Her green eyes looked up at me through those thin rimmed glasses of hers like I was her lifeline. Considering this was the first day of classes for Arcadia, it made sense.

"Breath in."

She gulped in a huge breath, puffing her chest and cheeks out.

"Breath out."

And she blew it all out in a loud and exaggerated fashion.

"Are you ok?"

"Yes."

"Am _I_ ok?"

"…no?"

I cuffed her on the back of her head, grumbling to myself over the sound of her snickers. The soft fabric of my gloves and shirt dulled my sense, but leaving no less of an impact.

"Taylor, I've been going here for two years. You'll be fine."

"I mean, shoot," I snorted, "Mom and Dad were even considering you skipping a grade."

"Really?"

"Yeah, but they didn't want you to…" I trailed off, before I suppressed a grimace, "miss Emma."

"Ooooh."

Emma…Taylor seemed to forgive her almost immediately. I couldn't really bring myself to do the same. She'd hurt Taylor, betrayed her. Emma abandoned years of trust, faith, friendship, and sisterhood over a bad day and some new girl. Who's to say she wouldn't do it again?

Certainly, it made me glad that Taylor was coming here.

"Weren't they thinking of letting me go to Winslow with her?" Taylor asked.

I nodded, pulling her with me as we walked up the sidewalk towards the imposing modern architecture before us.

"Dad, actually. Mom thought you should go to where you could get the best education. Dad thought it would be better if you stayed with your friends."

"Now," I motioned towards myself, "since I never really had that problem-"

"-Because you suck at making friends- "

I shot her a look.

"Sorry…"

"…and Father left that inheritance from his totally legitimate business-"

"Why do you always say it like that?" Taylor interrupted me, her face scrunching up

"Because it was his business," I say nonchalantly, "That was totally legitimate."

"But you why do you always-"

"ANYWAYS," I cut her off loudly, changing topics with all the subtlety of a bomb. "I went to Arcadia with no problems. It's also what edged Arcadia over the others since, well, I think it's great, while everyone else says the gangs run Winslow. Plus, if all else fails you'll have your big sis to watch over you."

"…huh."

"And, you know, Aunt Grace would probably murder dad if he didn't at least give you a chance."

"She did kind of deck him in the face that one time…"

"So don't you worry. The place is great, and no one's going to bother you," I smirked. "And if they do..." I chuckled darkly, unable and unwilling to keep those thoughts to myself as I revel in them. Licking my teeth with a grin, I tell her, "well, I hope they give me the excuse."

I glanced to the side, seeing Taylor giving me an odd look with a furrowed brow.

"What?"

"Nothing!" she blushed, eyes snapping front, pulling her bookbag close to her back as she jogged forward.

I frowned.

 _…Was that the wrong thing to say?_

/-|-\

\/-\\_|_/-\/

/\\-/_|_\\-/\

\\-|-/

"So, how were your classes?"

"Boring."

"Oh ho?" I smirked. "so no one decided to call you out? Challenge you to an honor battle?"

Her cheeks flushed red, her face curling into an adorable pout. "Shut up."

I gasped theatrically, "You mean to say they did not, in fact, duel you for the right to enter?"

Taylor let out a low moan as she ducked her head down. "Shut _up_." She whined.

I chuckled as I plopped down at the lunch table. "Just saying, you got wound up for nothing."

She sat opposite me, shifting in her seat nervously. "I guess."

"I mean, it is the first day of school," I pointed out. "Every class is just going to be a bunch of syllabi and stuff getting handed out."

"Yeah…"

Taylor still had that awkward fidgeting about her, like she didn't know what to do with herself. She kept making those motions, the beginnings of conversation. All the tells were there, the twitch of her lips, the intake of breath, the shifting of position, but each time she would abort before she opened her mouth. From the way her eyes darted around, it was easy to see why.

Taylor wanted so desperately to talk, but she didn't feel comfortable talking in public, not with all these people that could hear.

At least, not if she started.

"Hey Taylor?" I asked, startling her out of her thoughts.

"Hm! Yeah?!" She looked up with wide eyes, trying to bury every trace of her nervousness.

 _Cute_ , I thought to myself with a smile. "Come on," I urged her as I got up.

"Huh?" She faltered, but followed. "But I brought lunch…?"

"I know." I took her bookbag off, putting it on her empty seat. "But, they have some great hot food, and you look like if you take anymore stress you're going to implode."

She gave me a worried glance, it's nearly enough to make me roll my eyes.

"No one's gonna take your stuff, Taylor," I chide her, pulling her by the arm. "And you can get whatever you want, I'm buying. A nice warm steak would do you some good."

"O-ok" She recultantly folds.

That was mostly true. All true, in fact. It just wasn't the whole truth. I also needed time to think of something good to talk about.

Sure, I was calmer than she was, since for me it was just getting back in the saddle of Arcadia. That didn't mean I was a social genius. Sure, I knew Taylor pretty well, but outside of her and a couple others? Well, she had a point when she said I was terrible at making friends.

So, in the time it took for us to reach the buffet-area that was the cafeteria, I had a few subjects rolling around in my mind. Potential paths my thoughts branched out into. Each one was a viable possibility, but also a kind of risk. Still, that's why I had several of them.

And that's when I saw _Her_.

I could feel _Her_ aura pouring into the air around me. The thick scent of Her aroma sinking into me. My eyes dragged on Her blonde form. The curve of Her body, the color of Her eyes, the shape of her smile.

All of it, Her subtle influence spreading it's fingers through my mind, calling my brain to praise Her.

And then, like a snake in the noose, my brain slipped through Her grip. Each cell stepping back into line, Her will having no hold on its shifting form. In its place, something much colder.

Just like every time before.

"So I see you've seen our resident super-star." I commented idly.

"Wha-?! I-!" Taylor blurted, caught staring at Her.

It was easy to laugh at now. "Relax, Taylor. She gets everyone. Still, Victoria should probably learn restraint," I sighed.

The girl in question sat at a table, surrounded by friends. All of them were laughing, smiling, or otherwise having a good time. Everyone in the room noticed her; it was impossible not to. Her smile, Her laugh, Her enticing aura.

It was kind of subtle, and kind of not, and I don't think it was on purpose, so I didn't really fault her for it, but she still had an impact.

Victoria Dallon, or as she might be more popularly known, Glory Girl, was the only open cape in the whole school. And it was something clear as day. Sometimes she might forget, be too lazy, or decide to show off and just levitate a bit. A couple times she'd even shown off her blatant brute strength.

But it was her aura that was most pervasive.

From what I can tell, the first time it hit you like a brick to the face. She was like the sun, a blinding radiance of unparalleled beauty and grace. It wasn't always that bad, and it was usually just on the first meeting it hit so hard, but first impressions were important. Afterward, it looked like it would be far more subtle. Instead of looking at her in constant, there would just be this niggling feeling of, "Look at Her. Isn't She special?".

If I cared more about other people, I'd probably call it insidious. But, it didn't really hurt people, nor did it seem to be bad enough to dissuade her from all punishment or criticism. At least, I hoped not. Kind of hard to tell without getting a peek at everyone's brains.

Still, wasn't much I could do about it.

 _But if she touches Taylor, I'll rip her fucking spine out._

"Come on, Taylor," I encouraged as I pulled my sister forward, burying my thoughts of murder and rage deep inside a familiar pit.

"I'm hungry"

/-|-\

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"Girls?"

"Hey dad."

The sound of the door clicking shut preceded the sound of the TV shutting off. I threw the remote back on the table as Taylor looked towards the entry hall, awaiting Dad's appearance.

"So how was school?" he called out.

"It was fine," Taylor answered.

"Hey Dad, where's your shotgun?" I asked innocuously.

Taylor shot me a look of tortured betrayal.

"…So what's his name?" Dad eventually asked, sliding into the living room with a suspicious look on his face.

"Oh, we don't know because _somebody_ was too nervous to even say hi." I looked pointedly at her.

"Y-you don't just go up to people and randomly say hi and ask for their name!" she exclaimed. "It's…I don't know, rude!"

"How else are you supposed to find out his name?" I questioned.

"I…uh…I'll just wait around and watch him and stuff. You know, wait to hear others call his name."

"So you're going to stalk him."

"Hey!"

"Well, that's how I met your mother," Dad commented, plopping down on his chair

I blinked. "Wait, what?"

"Mhm." He nodded, reclining back and resting his eyes. I could hear the smooth leather stretch and crinkle under his movements. His joints were popping as his muscles unwound from a long day of stressful work.

For a moment, he just sat there.

"Your mother…" he began slowly, "…she was kinda out of my league. At least, it seemed like it." He chuckled. "I mean, I barely knew her name, really. But Mama didn't raise no fool, and dad always told me information is vital, so that's what I did. I watched, I waited, I gathered info, and I learned about her." He sighed, wistfully, "Honestly, the more I learned, the more I fell in love. Though, that might have just been the hormones talking."

Taylor made a face, but I was enthralled.

"Still, it might have been a mistake to, er, 'surveil' someone involved in Lustrum's group back then."

"She didn't, like, break your legs, did she?" I asked with morbid curiosity.

" _Almost_ ," he recalled as held up a hand, eyes still shut. "Fortunately, your old man's got more game than that."

Taylor rolled her eyes and made a gagging sound, while I just waited eagerly for the punchline.

"When she confronted me with a crowbar, thinking I was gonna try and rape her or something, I pulled out the gift I'd made her." He wore a gentle grin. "Roses were nice, but any schmuck with money can buy roses. I mean, that's just throwing money at the problem. And if there was one thing I'd figured out, it was that she didn't care about money. So instead, I gave her-"

"A rose carved from wood." I finished.

He blinked, looking up at me. "How'd you know that?"

"I uh, found it," I admitted, a touch sheepish. "In, you know, Mom's stuff in the attic."

"Oh…"

"There…was a lot of other stuff in there too."

"Yeah…" he all but whispered, "every gift I gave her was something I'd gotten with my own blood, sweat, and tears. Even the ring…"

"Even us…" Taylor muttered, a strange look on her face as she started to draw in on herself.

For a moment, I could feel the atmosphere in the room taking that oh so familiar spiral down. I could feel that oppressive weight rising back up, like a thick fog, choking out the light in our life.

I defied it.

"You're so corny," I snorted, forcefully injecting humor back into the room.

"Hey!" Taylor cried indignantly

"Mmm…" Dad smiled lazily in the chair. "Technically Amelia's more of a gift from your mother."

Taylor's mouth quickly flipped into a guilty "O" shape, realization dawning on her.

Seeing things had hit an awkward spot, Dad spoke up again. "So what'd you girls make for dinner?"

"Baked Ziti!" Taylor cheered, her mind shifting gears at the drop of a hat.

I could only chuckle at the way her mind worked, at how it seemed as if she could hop past and overcome pain. I chuckled because it was all I could do to push down the pain.

/-|-\

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I came back downstairs after brushing my teeth with Taylor. She'd gone to bed relatively early since she liked to get up before the sun in the morning. I, on the other hand...would be up for a while.

To my surprise, I found Dad getting off the phone,

"Yeah…thanks. Take care."

 _Click_

To my concern, he looked unwell.

"Dad?"

He jerked up, taken off guard by my sudden appearance, "Amelia, when'd you…"

He trailed off, shaking his head.

"Dad? What happened."

He rubbed the back of his neck, letting out a harsh breath, his eyes averting mine.

"…It's Emma," he eventually said.

My fist clenched. My bones groaned.

"Emma?"

"Yeah…" he sighed. "Zoe…Zoe found out about what happened."

My eyes narrowed. "What?"

"It looks like…Alan and Emma were ambushed by Merchants. They managed to pull Emma away from him. They tried to-"

He couldn't even finish the sentence.

I don't think he had to.

"Luckily some vigilante intervened. Saved them. But Emma… "

He just let out another harsh breath, leaning against the wall. His hands clenched into fists as he stewed in a silent rage. "They had thought that she'd recovered," he began, "but…"

"But then she snapped at Taylor," I supplied.

I let out a hot breath. My muscles writhed and wormed under my skin, coiling and churning beneath the surface. My blood boiled as my tongue twisted itself within its cage of teeth.

"So…Zoe's convinced them to have Emma get real help." Dad gave me a meaningful look, "She could really use a friend."

"Taylor."

"I know you haven't forgiven her-"

"-Like you have."

He shot me a sharp look.

"Sorry," I flushed.

"True or not," he continued with a darker expression, "Emma could really use someone to lean on. She sounds…fragile."

Now it was my turn to sigh. "I guess me and Taylor could swing by their place this week. Maybe hang out this weekend."

"Good." He gave me a nod without pleasure. "She could use all the help she can get."

 _That's right, because she's just a victim too._ I let out another breath, releasing a burst of tension and anger. For a brief moment, I actually felt calm. A brief, temporary, moment of serenity in a sea of chaos. And when it all came rushing back, when that flood of hate and rage in my heart all came rushing back, I had somewhere else to aim it.

 _Because of those Merchants_

My skin felt tight against my flesh. My anger simmered just beneath the surface, begging to be set free, screaming to be unleashed. If Danny'd been my biological father, I probably would have gotten it from him, given his own issue with anger. Maybe I did, and it was just an issue of nurture over nature.

Either way, ever since that day I'd had this fire, this burning rage right beneath the skin. Fury flowed through my veins, boiling my blood. It was an inferno, a parasite. It fed off my love, my happiness, my hope, and all of my shattered dreams. Every broken promise, lost love, and haunted memory was just more kindling for the blaze.

"And the Merchants?" I challenged, holding him with a burning gaze.

He met my eyes, his own chips of ice.

"Scum."

 _At least I have acceptable targets this time._

/-|-\

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" _Salutations, my dearest Amelia._

 _If you are reading this, then I am lost to the world. By law or by death, I am gone. Such risks are part of the job I took up. But I had not accounted for you_

 _As such, I feel it my duty to be prepared for the worst. To ensure that, even should I be gone, that you'd never lose my guidance._

 _Thus, this journal. One of many, each different, but should you find one, I felt it best to get the important things across in each one._

 _Yes, Amelia, I am your father. Bartholomew Lavere, better known to the world as Marquis._

 _And in this journal, I shall talk of many things._

 _Justice._

 _Honor._

 _And Revenge._

 _Let us begin."_

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 _A/n:_

 _Hopefully, this chapter isn't a disappointment to all of you._

 _It's gone through a number of minor revisions, and I did have an errant thought to send them to Winslow, but Arcadia is really what I was aiming for. I really wanted to nip the bullying thing in the bud and move on to other stuff, partially because my own experiences with bullying just kind of fizzled out in High School._

 _I'm also not sure about how well the stuttering went. I don't stutter when I'm nervous, I do a lot more pauses so I can think over what I'm saying, but I was aiming for Cute Taylor, and I figured Stuttering Taylor would work better for that purpose than Barack Taylor._

 _I also did some last minute tweaks my betas/editors haven't looked at cause they got shit to do, and I'm hoping they don't fuck me over. I also know for a fact that there's a mess of me switching between past and present tenses in here somewhere, it's just too fucked for me to bother figuring out. Every time I try to fix one I find three more._

 _And, like last time, the next chapter will be coming up in a week._


	3. A Witch's Treats

Progenitor: A Witch's Treats

 _A/n: I was truck by a whim and decided to do this._

 **Taylor**

 _Alright_ , _One more time_.

I looked over my collection of resources once more, making sure everything was in order. Maps, logs, photos, charts, and even a list of objectives. All put together made for the ultimate plan.

I knew who gave the best treats from notes gathered over years past. I knew where they all were in the three areas we'd be trick-or-treating, as well as the best routes and times for maximum treats. Everything I'd done was to maximize the amount of candy I could get on my run.

On my last run.

 _Everything's here_ , I nodded to myself, pushing down those lingering doubts, _I've made my plan and checked it twice._

"It's perfect." I whispered.

I picked up my notes and research materials and moved to stuff them into my bookbag. I'd need to bring them all with me, even re-reading them day and night for three weeks straight didn't mean I could remember them perfectly. I opened up the bag to put them in, when suddenly there was a bright flash in front of me.

I squealed in surprise, stumbling and fumbling with the papers in my shock. Temporarily blinded, I managed to fling them all out onto the floor, and only just barely caught myself on a chair. I blinked back the spots in my vision and looked up.

Only to see a very familiar face staring back at me.

And in her hands was a camera.

"Amy!" I whined.

At my reaction, a smirk crawled its way across her face.

"Is something wrong, sister dearest?" She asked innocently, falling into character with ease.

"Stop taking pictures of me!" I pleaded, my cheeks flushing in embarrassment, "I'm not a kid anymore."

"Oh~" she began theatrically. "But my sweetest sister, you are still so young and innocent. It is a state that shall not last forever. I take these images, so that I might forever have your youth to guide me."

And with that, she revealed the photo she'd taken.

It showed me, in my purple and pink witches dress, tripping over my own feet and throwing the books all over the floor. My glasses were sliding off my face, revealing my now bright red eyes. My currently dark blue hair spilled out from under the matching witch's hat I'd gotten with a golden crescent moon on the buckle.

I could feel my face heat up even more.

"Noo" I whined, "Get rid of it!"

"No such luck, dear sister. This image is far too precious for me to lose."

"But it makes me look like a klutz! It's so bad."

"And yet, to me, it is the brightest star in the night."

"I'm not a kid anymore." I pouted, "I'm almost done middle school."

" _Almost_ ," She noted smugly.

"You're only 2 years older!"

"2 and a _half_."

"Don't go thinking you're special just because you helped make my costume...or collect my notes...or color my hair...or get my contacts…" I trailed off, deciding to shut up when the list of things only got larger and larger.

"Oh no?" She mocked, "Only that? Anything else you care to add?"

I stewed in my indignant fury, glaring up at her with all the rage I could muster.

"I'll catch up," I growled, "You'll see."

Her eyes widened, showing her now golden orbs staring at me with incredulity. I'd gotten the best of her. I'd shown her my inner metal, the determination in my heart, and she'd-

"Oh you're so _cute!_ "

Suddenly I was picked up and all but thrown into the air. Amy's arms wrapped around me like the arms of a bear, keeping me pinned to her chest. She was rubbing her cheek against the top of my hair, nuzzling me as she cooed, "You're just so cute when you think you're being scary."

" _Amy!_ "

* * *

Our first stop was Emma's house.

I knocked on the door and waited for someone to let me in. From inside I could hear a distant " _Coming!"_

Before we could really get on with "The Plan", we had to round up the gang. Afterwards we would circle back through all the places. Dad had driven me out here and was currently waiting in the truck for us.

I spent a few minutes while waiting to inspect the Barnes's lawn. It had the display of casual wealth a lot of houses in this neighborhood did. Which is to say, a litany of lawn ornaments and displays, each one lighting up the Halloween night. Jack-O-Lanterns lined the steps up to the door, and more than one blow-up ghost stood by the sidewalk.

Personally, I kinda thought the bought props were a little gaudy. I preferred the hand-carved Jack-O-Lanterns myself.

Just as I was inspecting the artificial pumpkins, the oak door opened.

"Hey, Aunt Zoe!" I turned back and chirped politely.

"Hey, Taylor," She said with an amused smile. "Having fun?"

Aunt Zoe actually stood nearly at eye level with me. She was wearing what I think was supposed to be an outfit the mom wore in some old show, I think it was called Adam's family?

"Well, I mean..." I looked down, feeling my face heat up. "I'm trying to make it special, because…"

"Yes, yes." She chuckled, inviting me in with a wave of her hand. "You girls are so close to going to High school already. Can't be seen trick-or-treating in high school, now can you?"

I got a distinct impression she was mocking me. "Nope!" I said proudly instead, puffing my chest out and lifting my chin, "So I came up with The Plan to give us the Ultimate Halloween night!"

As we passed by the kitchen, I caught a glance of Alan wearing what I assumed was the complimentary dad outfit to go with Aunt Zoe.

"Well then," Aunt Zoe commented "I guess that explains the theme."

"Yep." I nodded. "I've been planning this night for weeks. Everything needs to be perfect! So Emma had better be ready for the most candy-filled night of her life!"

Aunt Zoe snorted. "Well…" She trailed off.

She opened the door to reveal Emma sitting in the backyard with her costume.

And a knife.

She was sitting on an upturned cauldron beside a little treasure chest and what looked like a doll with a half-carved pumpkin for a head. In one hand, she was acutely focused on what was clearly a manual for pumpkin carving. The other hand held a large knife that she looked about 3 seconds away from accidentally butchering the pumpkin with, given the perplexed look on her face.

And all in a black and orange witch's dress.

"Emma!" I called out to get her attention.

She looked up from the book, her eyes wide with surprise.

"Wait, what?" She said, blinking at me in complete confusion. "Taylor, why are you here already?"

"...Because we're going trick-or-treating?" I said, more than a little confused myself, "You know... The Plan?"

"Yeah…" She nodded slowly "But that's not until 8, right?"

I stared at her blankly for a long moment before turning to her mom. Aunt Zoe looked at me with a knowing smile that screamed 'Yep, that's Emma alright'

I turned back to Emma and said, "You...do know what time it is, right?"

Emma blinked slowly, then looked up at the sliver of a crescent moon hanging in the night sky.

"Eight?" She guessed.

I nodded.

"Oh."

"...How long have you been trying to carve that pumpkin?"

"...I don't want to talk about it."

* * *

"You girls have fun!"

Aunt Zoe waved at us from the front lawn.

"We will Mom! Bye!" Emma waved back distractedly, trying to buckle her seatbelt.

I looked up towards the front seat to see Dad humming along to some kind of Halloween tune on the radio. He was wearing a Frankenstein's Monster costume, one based on the original book, not the more modern liberties taken with the character.

Amy had done his makeup just like she'd done mine and her own. I don't really know how she managed to do it so well. Like magic, she could make anyone look like anything, it was incredible.

"Why's she here?" Emma asked, pointing her thumb at the person in the passenger's seat.

As Dad started to drive off, said person turned around and gave us a ghost of a smile.

"Something wrong, girls?" Amy said in a far too pleased voice.

"Supervision." Dad answered Emma's question.

"You mean a shackle," I huffed.

Emma nodded along in solidarity.

"Awe, come on guys, I can be fun." Amy grinned, breaking character for a moment.

"Nope." Emma shook her head. "You're old."

"Mhm." I agreed with a nod of my own.

" _What?_ " Amy pouted. "I'm not old."

"You're a high schooler," Emma pointed out. "That means you're old."

"And everyone knows old people ruin the fun," I added.

" _Wow_." Dad chimed in with a flat voice.

"See, dad's smart," I explained, "He knows he'll ruin everything, so that's why he's staying out of it."

"I can turn this car around," he commented.

"And he'll ruin it because he's _too_ much fun." I corrected smoothly.

"Better,"

"But you guys are almost in High school too." She pointed out.

" _Almost_ ," I said, twisting her own argument against her.

Amy gaped in shock. I held my stony and resolute expression, refusing to give an inch. Emma sat beside me, my sister in arms.

"I'm stealing all your candy."

" _Noooo!"_

* * *

 _Knock knock knock._

Finally, we'd arrived at the last leg of the introduction. We were rounding up the final member of the gang.

Dad was standing behind us, letting me take the lead, but still here to say hi. He was going to be returning back to Emma's house to hang out with Alan and Zoe for a while, and at the same time we were going to stick around here to begin the second stage of The Plan. All we had to was retrieve the last member of the gang.

And when the door creaked open, there she stood.

"Hey, Charlotte!" I greeted her, "Ready to begin The Plan?"

"Am I ever?!" She smiled right back, just as excited as me. "You ready to get going Emma!"

"Yep!"

"Dear god, they haven't even had sugar yet." Amy deadpanned behind me.

"And now you know why I volunteered you for this," Dad whispered to her.

I watched Charlotte's dad step around the doorframe from behind her, his pursed lips showed a worried, yet hopeful, expression.

"Hey Danny." He nodded.

"Hey Tom," Dad replied somewhat stiffly.

"Amy." Tom nodded at my sister.

Amy gave him a familiar grin. "Hey Mr. Charlotte's dad."

Tom groaned and rubbed his face with a free hand.

Charlotte was more my friend than her parents were Dad's. Dad was acquainted with them, but they didn't really grow up together or work in the same circles, so there wasn't too much overlap. I think both fathers were just happy their daughters had managed to make more friends.

Amy knew Charlotte's parents more than dad did, but that was to be expected.

I pulled Charlotte and Emma into a group huddle to talk about the plan while my dad and Charlotte's talked about something.

"Alright," Charlotte began, "So the plan is to start here since this is the closest place to Taylor's house, right?"

"Then we're going by Taylor's neighborhood," Emma agreed, "And finally mine at the end of the night."

"Which is where Dad'll be hanging out, so he can drive us all back home." I finished for her. "And all and all-"

"You should be back by eleven," Charlotte's dad supplied sternly.

Charlotte looked up at him, surprised.

He shrugged. "It's Friday, and Danny promises me that you'll be safe with Amy. Especially in Emma's neighborhood."

The implications were painfully obvious, especially in a city like Brockton Bay. Even Charlotte couldn't ignore it, given the grimace that flashed across her face.

"And I got a taser," Amy supplied, waving the object in her hand casually.

Charlotte's dad frowned, Dad looked like he choked back a laugh, and I just rolled my eyes. She was _so_ proud of that thing.

"Trust me," Dad said to Tom, "I _promise_ they'll be in safe hands with Amy."

Charlotte's dad gave him a dubious look, but eventually sighed. "Alright, Danny. I trust you."

A few moments later, dad had left, and we had left Charlotte's house. The three- _Four_ of us were at the start of our journey. The Plan was in motion, and tonight would be the greatest night of our lives, the Ultimate Halloween.

Nothing could possibly go wrong.

* * *

 _A/n: A nice little Halloween snippet. It's a touch late for , but I hope you like it all the same._

 _This is part one of two, dunno when two is coming out._


	4. Chapter 3

Progenitor

Chapter 3

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Taylor was confused.

"You want me to what?"

"Be a good friend to Emma," Amy said around another mouthful of food.

Amy's plate was piled high with food, something she was able to do because Arcadia's cafeteria was designed more like a buffet. On the one hand, Taylor found it odd that they would have to pay the same for their meals when Taylor usually got what her sister liked to call "Rabbit Food," while Amy would get enough food for a pack of wolves. Taylor figured, if anything, it was because Arcadia didn't actually _need_ the students to pay for their food at all. Not with how much the tuition was.

"She's gonna need a real friend for a while," Amy continued, dipping her steak into her fried rice, using it as some kind of edible spoon to shovel it into her mouth and consume the whole thing.

"Wasn't I already going to do that?" Taylor asked. It was what confused her after all. Well, that and the fact that her sister wasn't usually the type to forgive and forget.

"Mruphmglea-" Amy said with a stuffed mouth of food turning her words into nearly as big of a mess as her plate.

"Don't talk with your mouth full," Taylor chided with a frown, slapping her sister's hand as she went for a chicken tender.

Amy rolled her eyes. Taylor crossed her arms in response with an adamant frown. Amy smirked, then swallowed the swollen mass of ground food and mush in one revoltingly massive gulp. Taylor shivered at the disgusting large bulge traveling down Amy's throat and the pleased grin on her sister's face as she did it.

Taylor didn't think that could possibly be comfortable, she wasn't even sure how Amy did it without choking on it. Every time she saw her sister do it she got little nightmarish ideas of the bulge bursting out of her sister's throat or some kind of creature tearing it's way out.

"Happy?" Amy grinned.

"Why are you like this?" Taylor whined, feeling embarrassment enough for both of them. She glanced around nervously, hoping against hope that no one had seen her sister acting like...well...her sister.

Amelia just shrugged, as usual, not in the least bit interested in what others thought.

"Ugh." Taylor groaned. "Just...what were you trying to tell me?"

"Oh, right." Amy suddenly sobered up. "Look, Emma went through some bad shit-"

"Language," Taylor cut her off.

Amy gave her a look. Taylor held her ground.

"Emma went through some bad _poopoo_ ," Amy said pointedly.

Taylor nodded in approval.

Amy just looked up in silent prayer.

"Continue," Taylor prompted her sister.

"Right," Amy said flatly, "as I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted-"

Taylor stuck out her tongue,

"Emma had a bad experience," Amy continued regardless, "and she needs friends to help pull herself together. Aunt Zoe will be taking Emma over to Sanctuary on the weekend, but I can already tell you that she'll need the support of you and Charlotte."

Taylor began to straighten up herself, taking the more important subject to heart.

"Now, since Dad's basically just gonna want to be in a coma all Saturday, I can probably drive you, Charlotte, and Emma around after service if you want." Amy shrugged. "You could hang out at one of their houses, or go out somewhere to take Emma's mind off it."

Taylor thought that sounded nice, but she wasn't sure how she felt about the idea of monopolizing her sister's time like that.

"What about you?" Taylor asked. "Don't you have anything you want to do Saturday?"

"Not really." Amy gave her a self-deprecating smile. "As you so helpfully pointed out yesterday, I kinda suck at making friends."

"It's never too late to start?" Taylor offered with a helpless expression.

Her sister gave Taylor a bitter chuckle. "Were it so eas-"

She was cut off by a sudden roar in the cafeteria. It wasn't one of fear, panic, or anger. It wasn't a monster nor a machine. It was the roar of a crowd.

"What the fu...dge" Amy asked, turning to see what the source of the chanting crowd was. It hadn't quite gotten out of hand yet, it wasn't really a mob. But instead a lot of students in one area, very clearly looking at something special.

And something...blue.

"Oh, hey, it's your boyfriend," Amy noted casually as if to say, 'Huh, look at that.'

Taylor's face erupted in a fiery blush, "Shut _up_!" she hissed.

"Oh, he can't hear you," Amy waved her sister off, "He's far too busy inflating his own ego. Doing...something."

The blue haired boy was standing in the center of the crowd, in a small clearing they'd made from pushing aside some chairs and tables. In there with him was Victoria, the girl Amy'd mentioned to Taylor the other day. The boy looked like he was just eating up the attention. What it was about, they were too far away to really tell, but it looked like Victoria was enjoying it just as much.

"Huh," Taylor said, "I wonder what that's abou…"

And then the boy started dancing.

While floating in the air.

Surrounded by blue bubbles.

"What," Taylor whispered.

Victoria barked out a loud burst of laughter, drowning out the crowd for an instant, before she started matching the blue boy with her own mid-air tricks, joined by balls of golden light twirling around her. At the end of their little routine, they did a mid air high-five. Taylor managed to catch Victoria say something along the lines of, "That's my cousin!"

Taylor heard a bang and whipped her head around to see Amy having slammed her head down on the table with a groan.

"Oh god, there's two of them."

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Jack hadn't been having a good day.

All those months ago, things seemed like they were looking up. When Skidmark told them to push into ABB territory, to start making waves, it felt like ol' Skids had been sampling too much of the product.

But it'd worked out, they hadn't taken _much_ territory. Everyone knew if pushed too hard, they'd incite the dragon. Still – they'd made gains. They'd claimed ground, taken old ABB haunts, roughed up some of the locals to make a show of the fact that this was Merchant territory now.

Old buyers for ABB product now came to them, willing to accept a cheaper product for the same high. People from all walks of life had heard of the Merchants now. They had a brand, customers, and cred. All of this made Jack, a distribution manager, a very happy and wealthy man.

Then, of course, Lung had decided to shift his gaze in their direction.

It wasn't so obvious as a burning rage dragon strolling down the street, melting everything in his sight, but he had been sending in scouts. None of it was obvious, just a small uptick in the number of Asians in the area passing through. But sometimes they wore the colors. Sometimes a dealer caught a glimpse of that Oni Mask. Sometimes that dealer disappeared.

It was enough to ratchet up the tension. Jack never felt _explicitly_ in danger, but he always felt like something was looming just out of reach. Looking over his shoulder, jumping at shadows, and sleepless nights at thoughts of a blade with his name on it coming for him all left Jack drained and irritable.

The drugs helped, or at least Jack liked to think they did. Product was selling as good as ever, so he was never shy on cash these days. Good money and good weed went a long way to help relieve his stress.

That, of course, had been before one of his dealers turned up in the middle of his territory completely gutted from his head to his ass. Dwayne had turned up dead this morning, and by the end of the night the whole neighborhood had been filled with paranoia and fear.

Jack was only a distribution manager for the newly acquired territory for the Merchants, but that meant he was still responsible for turning a profit with the drugs he got. To turn a profit, he needed to make people want to buy his stuff. Something that was, put simply, hard to do when everyone thought a demon was going to come in the night and carve their guts out if they bought from them.

The fact that Jack would _also_ be on the list of targets for the psycho ninja wannabe certainly didn't help with his stress levels. What Jack needed was a break, something to breath new life into his operation.

Fortunately, he had people for that.

" _Jacky~_ " came an alluring voice from the other side of the door. "It's _Diane_."

Jack sighed in relief, sagging in his chair. He'd been expecting her.

He got up from his seat and walked across their little "Distribution Center" for this area. It was the stash house where they collected and stored product and supplies for the Merchants in this area. It could also be considered the local base of operations. It's certainly where Jack was sleeping.

That said, it wasn't that large in it of itself, nor was the next nearest safehouse that far away. Merchant territory just wasn't that centralized. Instead of having a handful of large storehouses and bases, they had dozens of locations all over the place scattered wherever they could find a nice place to hole up and stash some goods.

Despite its lofty name as the Distribution Center, it was just one of dozens, if not hundreds, of abandoned buildings scattered all throughout the poorer streets of the city. In a previous life, it had been a repair shop for cars. The ABB had used it as a chop shop, and the Merchants would too, eventually, but right now they had more need for drugs. Drugs that could easily be moved in and out covertly through the large garage downstairs.

And now Diane was here with their latest delivery.

He opened the door to reveal a tanned skinned 20-something woman with long, half shaved, black hair with hot pink highlights running through them. She was wearing a white crop top with enough holes to give him a peek at her neon green bra underneath. On top of that, she wore a black vest that, from experience, he knew she hid a knife and gun in. Her pants for today were long jeans, surprisingly intact, and some black boots.

"Diane," Jack drawled, leaning on the door frame with an easy smile. "What can I do ya for? Come to take me up on my offer after all?"

Diane snorted, cocking a hand on her hip. "Cute, but no," she said with an amused smile.

She was a damn fine woman to look at, in Jack's opinion. Which made it a shame that her tastes ran much younger. She made up for it by running the product like no one else in his crew, especially with her SUV and her ability to "connect" with the kids. Jack tried not to think about the specifics of it too much. Something made easier by the amount of money it made him. .

"So," Jack inquired, "Delivery? I got word you were coming with good news. Left in the dark as to what it is."

"Yep." She smirked. "Got it in the truck downstairs. Looks like there was some nice loot in the raids when we pushed forward. Shit the ABB left behind. Good shit."

Jack raised a brow, now very interested. "What kind of 'good shit'?"

"Some premium grade product from overseas," Diane said with the grin of a cat who'd caught the canary. "No idea who the chinks got it from, but those bastards were sitting on the score of a lifetime. Skids reckons that it's tinkertech shit too."

"Tinkertech drugs?" Jack leaned back, a second brow joining the first. "He know it's safe?"

"I mean." Diane shrugged with a helpless smile. "It's tinkertech drugs. What about that sounds safe?"

Jack had to acknowledge her point there.

"And, like, when has that ever stopped us before? Remember when Clank injected some shit into his dick?"

Jack _did_ , in fact, remember that. He wished he didn't, especially the part where it turned green.

"I don't feel like that's a _great_ example of why we should do this," he pointed out. "That was a lot of blood."

"Maybe," Diane nodded, "But tell me he didn't have the greatest 8 hours of his life."

Jack had to admit that Clank didn't seem too broken up about it. Until the moment that they'd had to bust out a knife, the man had been a party animal in the best possible way. And hey, it still worked.

Mostly.

"Fair," he admitted, face scrunched up as he considered it.

"And why do you care?" She punched his shoulder playfully. "Not supposed to sample the product, eh? Not like we give a shit if it fucks up the customers."

"Cause repeat customers are the best customers," he pointed out almost distractedly as he rubbed his bearded chin, "And I've had a pretty shit week. I could do with a nice new high."

"We could throw a party?" Diane suggested, I mean, if we got the gang all together to throw a big ol' shindig that got the block jump'n even after that shit Oni Lee pulled, it'd really shove it in the face of the ABB fuckers. You know, the best revenge is a life well partied and all that."

"Yeah…" Jack nodded, coming around to the idea. "Plus, strength in numbers."

"It might could do…"

/-|-\

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"What the actual fuck."

A few hours later, Jack and Diane had gathered together their crew. It wasn't a large group, and none of them were exactly central to the power structure of the merchants, but they were all his friends, and they'd all gotten here together. Carlos and Jason had shown up first, with Clank just recently arriving to the garage from his day "job".

The garage had belonged to an older repair shop that was beneath the owner's home. They'd left at some point, and now Jack made use of it. The ground floor was mostly concrete, with a few pits and lifts for cars, and a lot of storage space. Daine's big purple SUV was sat in what they liked to call the loading bay, which was really just the more car-oriented part of the garage.

To the side was a lounge area. It had a couch pit, fridge, TV, sound system, bongs, and other amenities his crew had put in to make it their home. On the table in the middle of all the couches were the preliminary plans for the party they'd drawn up. Mostly time tables, loose logistics, and location specifics. Nothing concrete, not before they inspected and tried the product.

Which left them here. Staring at a vial of thick black liquid.

"I repeat," Jack said, dumbfounded and more than a little creeped out, "What the fuck."

"Tinkertech drugs." Diane shrugged. "Tinker tech fuckery."

The container they'd pulled out of Diane's car was a big sealed cylinder, like for gas, but fancier. While it looked like it'd be a bitch and a half to open, they did have a method by which it could safely dispense controlled amounts by providing it with the glass vials that came with it. If ominous thick metal drum wasn't enough, then the unnaturally black ooze that poured into the vial certainly was.

Especially the way it never seemed to sit still.

"Right," said a tall African American man with long dreadlocks pulled into a single thick braid wearing a heavy coat, white t-shirt, and jeans. The dark skinned man, with just the barest hints of a beard, nodded skeptically. "Yeah, naw, fuck that."

"Aw come on, Jason, don't be a pussy." Diane grinned. "Just think of it as some black tar heroin."

"Black tar heroin don't look like it wants to eat you from the inside out," Jason pointed out. "Black tar heroin don't but barely move. That shit ain't _stopped_ mov'n."

"Again, tinkertech fuckery," Diane pointed out, "It comes with the territory."

"How do we know it's tinker tech _drugs_ , huh?" he argued, "Maybe it's tinkertech bio-weapon shit. I seent aliens, I seent X Files."

"I've taken a lot of shit," Jack said. "But I'm not desperate enough to try this shit. Not yet, anyways." He added with a mutter.

"Skids and his crew tried it," Diane shrugged, "They thought it was straight fire, so they sent it out here."

Something about that tickled Jack's brain as wrong, though he couldn't yet put a finger on what.

"Oh, fuck all you pussy-footing bitchs," Clank said abrasively, the pale skinned man wiht a buzzcut in a blue-grey jumpsuit pushing his way through the small crowd. "We're Merchants, in case you fucks forgot. Not that fancy prancy Empire with their "purity", or the mustache-twirling ABB with their "heritage". Nah."

Clank snatched a bottle right out of Diane's hand.

"We're fucking _Merchants_. The real American gangsters that ain't trying to play nothing to nobody." He tore the cap off the top, leaving the ooze exposed to the open air. "We're trailblazers, not _pussies_. And it's high time ya'll remembered that."

With those fateful words, he pulled the vial to his mouth, threw back his head, and consumed every last drop of the ooze in one swig. When he was done, he threw the vial to the ground and let it shatter on the floor.

" _ **YEAH!**_ " Clank belted out, thumping his chest in a primal ritual. "That's what I call _good shit!_ "

Jack blinked, dumbfounded. "...did you just..."

"I mean, you brought Clank," Jason pointed out, "what were you expecting to happen?"

"Yeah, yeah." Jack rubbed his face in exhaustion. "I got what I paid for, I get it."

"How does it taste?" Carlos asked.

Jack knew the hispanic as an adrenaline junky of the worst kind. Sure, Carlos was his friend, but the guy would chase after danger, and his next high, almost as much as Clank chased after drugs. It usually caused more headaches than it fixed for Jack, but the man's affinity for guns, and the implausible number he could hold in his vest and baggy cargo pants was helpful in a nasty pinch.

"Like wet shit rolled in piss and vinegar," Clank said unironically, wiping a few traces from his lips. Then he pointed a finger at Diane with a deadly serious expression on his face. "Never let me do that again."

"Not enjoying the old flavor?" Diane smirked.

"No, I'm fucking not," he responded with a smile that meant more annoyance than pleasure.

"I take it you're not having the high of your life?" Jack pressed. The drugs weren't going to be too useful if all they did was taste like shit and make you want to throw up. People would go through a lot of effort to chase their high, but they wouldn't do stupid shit just to do stupid shit.

 _...well they don't do it often enough to make a profit,_ Jack reconsidered.

"No I'm…" Clank trailed off with a frown.

Clank paused and stumbled back. He held out one hand to brace himself against the brick wall of the basement. He closed his eyes, bringing his free hand up to his face as he let out a groan.

"Clank?" Jack asked, hand on the handle of his knife as he approached his friend, "You okay bud?"

Clank's arm on the wall twitched, his hand clenching tightly as a something throbbed in the arm. His muscles bulged for a moment, his fingers digging into the wall, before it all settled back down again. Clank removed his hand from his face, letting out a breath as he blinked rapidly several times.

Jack thought he caught a glimpse of Clank's eyes turning into pitch black orbs the same color as the liquid vials, but is was gone as soon as it appeared.

"Clank?" Jack said, a warning in his tone as he slowly drew the knife.

"Yeah, yeah," Clank waved him off, "I'm here, just...damn."

Jack relaxed, if only fractionally, as Clank pushed himself off the wall. The man seemed slightly unsteady on his feet, taking long looks at everything across the room.

"Whoa…" Clank whispered.

"It hit you?" Jason asked.

"Ya damn fucking straight it hit me," Clank muttered, "Holy shit, this is amazing. It's like…"

"Like what?" Diane prodded.

"Like...like my world's exploded…" Clank described unhelpfully.

"That sounds bad," Jason pointed out.

"It sounds fucking amazing," Carlos countered.

"Nah, nah, it's like…" Clank tried again, "It's like everything's in hi-res, yeah? Like, I can see _everything_. And it's all slowed down too, man. It's crazy."

"Huh?" Jack eloquently inquired.

"Sounds kinda lame," Jason added.

"No no, it's...it's…" Clank chuckled. "Man, I need to sit down."

Clank stumbled his way to the couch, more so falling into it than sitting down, and just laid there. He looked up at the ceiling with a dopey grin, "This is _amazing_."

Carlos pointed at the now horizontal Clank. " _Now_ he looks high."

Jack had to admit, Clank did look like he was having the time of his life.

"I want what he's having."

Several minutes later, the crew was all sitting down on the couch pit near the stairs. Each one had a vial in their hand, save Clank, who was already giggling maniacally on his little corner of cushions.

"Alright, you boys ready to take the dive?" Diane said, her brow raised in challenge and her smirk daring them to back out.

"Sure." Carlos shrugged.

"Not really," Jason answered, "but I don't really have anything better to do today."

Jack just grunted. He swirled the vial dubiously.

"Then here we go!" Diane cheered, throwing her head back as she chugged the entire contents.

Carlos did the same, while Jason sighed before simply sipping it.

Jack gave his own vial one last look, before shrugging.

"Fuck it."

He drank the vial.

For a moment, he felt like spitting it back up. Clank had not been joking about the taste. Jack didn't quite know what wet shit tasted like, but the liquid was thick and had the kind of warmth that reminded him of a living being. The taste was pungent, odd because it had no scent before hand. It certainly smelled strongly of vinegar. He could see where Clank got the idea for the rest, but to Jack it smelled more like sulphur. All and all, unpleasant in the extreme, but he could choke it down.

When it was over and sitting in his gut, nothing happened. Jack felt fine, which was the problem. Jack didn't want to be high, he wanted to be stoned out of his mind. He glared at the bottle for a moment. "Well that's disappointi-"

He world exploded.

Every single sense was turned up to 11, no, 20, and set to pleasure. Not the erotic pleasure he'd thrown himself into many a time. No, this was a warm comfort. This was like wrapping yourself up in a toasty blanket on a cold winter's day.

His ears could pick up every sound. The rats scurrying around, the quiet breaths of his friends, the cars in the distance. He could even hear the sound of his own blood shifting in his veins. He could feel the texture of the couch, of his own clothing, brushing up against his skin. Resting on it, folding, stretching, and compressing it.

He could smell the faint whiffs of oil, sex, and kitchen grease that filled this room. He could detect the slight hints of each person, the differences in their habits. He could see every single grain of rock in the concrete. The individual hairs on Trevor's arm. The veins in the wings on each fly in the room. The worms writhing under Diane's skin. All of it slowed down to a tenth, or even a hundreth, the normal speed.

Every single data point trickled through his mind, one piece at a time. His mind processed it all with a precision and care that drowned everything else out. For what felt like an eternity, Jack wasn't Jack, distribution manager for the Merchants in their newest land grab. He didn't live in Brockton Bay, capital shit hole of America. He didn't have to experience the fear of being hunted by a gang of psychotic Asians still throwing a bitch fit about losing their home. He wasn't even human. He just...was.

And it was beautiful.

 _Wait_ , Jack paused, taking a few hours to parse through his own thoughts.

 _There was...something important in there_. Jack's mind moved like molasses, slowly pouring over everything it'd seen.

The hair, the wings, the worms-

 _The worms!_ White hot searing fear poured into his veins. A cleansing fire that purged the mire from his mind.

He screamed, jumping off the couch in panic.

Diane's stomach, it was writhing. Like dozens of worms were wriggling just underneath the skin.

"Whoa whoa whoa, man," Jason stopped Jack, holding up his hands, "What's wrong, what's wrong?"

"There's worms!" he shouted, "they're inside her!"

 _Why are they so_ ** _slow_** , Jack wondered, _I have to get the worms out_ ** _out OUT!_**

"They're burrowing under your skin! Churning around inside you!" he yelled. He could see the worms in Jason too, now. The way they burrowed up his neck, crawling up to his skull.

"Jack!" Carlos shouted, getting up too, "You're just having a bad trip man, that's all it is!"

"No!" Jack roared, "No, it's-"

Diane _howled_ in agony. Jack whipped around to see her stomach _writhing_. The once toned skin of her belly stretching and twisting, as if something was churning beneath the surface. Her stomach swelled, as if some bloated corpse filled with maggots ready to burst forth.

"Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck," Jack whispered, frozen as time slowed to a crawl.

"Oh god, what the fuck!" Carlos shouted.

 _"_ _No no no no!"_ Diane whispered through clenched teeth to herself, desperately clinging to her undulating stomach in some hope of keeping it all inside her.

"Diane!" Jason shouted, running up to her, "You're gonna be okay, just hold still," he said, pulling out a knife.

"Whoa, Jason, what the fuck are you doing?" Carlos tried to stop Jason. "You're not doing what I think you're going to do, right?"

Diane latched onto Jason's arm with a vice grip, looking up at him with wild eyes, nearly frothing at the mouth. "Get them out of me!" she shouted.

When Jack looked at her, he could see something in her once green eyes. A flickering darkness. A worm, crawling just beneath the surface of her eyelid.

Diane pulled, and Jason's knife plunged into her bulging stomach. Her flesh split open like an overripe melon, and a torrent of black maggots, worms, and ooze spilled out. Infested innards covered the floor, and it never stopped coming out. There was no end, just more filth, more parasites to take them.

Jason stumbled back, slipping in the sludge and falling into the pool. Carlos cursed and pulled out a gun. Jack could only watch in growing horror, attempting to will his body to move, but everything was still moving so slowly. He felt stuck in amber, the whole world moving around him while he was stuck in time.

Jack was helpless to do anything more than watch as the worms descended on Jason, diving into his flesh. Jack wanted to scream as he saw the black maggots burrow into Jason's face, swimming into his eyes. He could hear Jason's panicked shouts as the worms took him. Then, a sharp blast of pain passed through him, and Jack could hear nothing but a dull ringing.

The bright flash of gunfire lit up the scene. The bullets from Carlos' gun ripped bloody holes in Diane's corrupted chest, popping maggot and woman alike. Jack blinked, stepping backwards as he slowly became himself again.

Carlos stopped firing, trying to do something with his gun with a trembling hand. Suddenly, Carlos collapsed to his knees, puking more of the infected sludge from his mouth. Jack could see the black maggots writhing in the vomit, in Carlos' skin, in his eyes. He could hear the muffled screams of his friends, he could feel the tingling in his own hands, the feeling pins and needles as the maggots tried to eat him.

He turned to Clank, and saw the man standing by the couch, watching them all with a disappointed eye. Jack could just barely hear him say something. "How unfortunate."

Clank blinked, and his eyes were filled with that same darkness again. "I'd been hoping more of you would be suitable hosts."

"W-what the fuck, Clank?" Jack stuttered, unable to believe his own senses. Was it the drugs? Was it all really just a bad trip?

Or was it real? Were they really all going to die here?

"Well," Clank smiled, ignoring Jack as he moved towards the pile of dark sick and parasites. He reached down and picked up one of the larger ones, a long black shape that looked like a snake made of dark slime and rot. "I suppose we can just do this the hard way. The children do need bodies, after all."

Clank turned to Jack, "You'd make fine hosts, don't you think Jack?"

Jack ran.

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Jack ran and ran and ran.

He ran until he finally reached the next Merchant safehouse. He pounded on the door, begging to be let in. After what felt like hours of being left alone in the dark, in the hungry hungry dark where those things lurked, he was finally let in.

"Whoa, Jack, you alright bud?" a man in Merchant colors said. Jack couldn't place his face at the moment.

"No. Worms. Clank. Black. Infected." Jack panted. He couldn't breathe, he was drowning in the air. His whole body felt like it was covered in pins and needles. Was it the infection? The drugs? Had there even been drugs?

"You're not making any sense, man." another one said.

Jack grabbed the man by the shirt, pulling him up to his face. "They're inside me!" Jack shouted.

The man pushed up off. Jack stumbled to the ground. He couldn't feel his legs anymore. "They're inside!" He rambled, unable to keep it all inside. He couldn't even put his own thoughts together, it all just came tumbling out. "They came from the ooze, the drugs. But it's not drugs, it's sickness. It's _infection_. It took her!"

"Who?"

"Diane! It ate her from the inside out!"

The two men gave each other an odd look. Jack didn't care.

"It's...they're...they're all back there. I left them. I-" Jack stopped, feeling something coming up from his stomach.

He leaned over and retched all over the floor. That same black sick came spilling out of him. The black maggots writhing in his own filth. That same corruption was inside him.

"See, see!" he roared, pointing at the sludge, "It's inside me!"

The two men looked at each other again. They blinked, and their eyes became black orbs. "What do you think, Trev?"

"I think he's drugged out his damn mind, Manny." Trev replied with a nod. "Take'n too much of the product for his own good."

"Yep. Wonder what happened to Carlos and Jason?"

"Dunno, but that blood all over his knife ain't a great sign."

"You're….you're…" Jack's addled mind put the pieces together. "You're infected."

"Whoa, bro. Calm down, Jack."

"Yeah man, ain't no one gonna hurt you."

"Shut up." Jack seethed through grit teeth. He could barely feel his own body. Everything was either nausea or pain. But he still had a knife in his hand. And he would be damned if they took him ali-

He felt a sharp pain in the back of his neck, then a cool feeling traveling throughout his body. Pain was quickly replaced by numbness, and he lost all strength in his body. He collapsed to the ground, unable to hold himself up. From the corner of his eye saw Her walk from behind him.

"You alright boys?" she asked, twirling a syringe of black fluid in her hand.

"Yeah, thanks Diane," one of the black eyed boys responded with a nod, "Looks like Jack took a bad trip."

Diane looked down at Jack with a smirk. And through the drugs, through the pain, and through the fear, Jack could see something else. Her solid black eyes were dead and hollow, and yet they seemed to shine with an unearthly light. Her lips were pulled into what even a blind man couldn't rightly call a smile. Her teeth glimmering a bright white in the dark and her fingers twitching in the air. There was an itch in her form, like a spring wound tight just waiting to be let loose.

Diane chuckled.

"Oh, you have no idea."

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 _A/n: Well then...that's a tone shift._

 _Hopefully, it works as well as intended and I haven't pushed most of you guys away from this fic._

 _I am, however, now on schedule again. Next chapter coming out next week. So thank Christ for that._

 _Anyways, that's all I got. Hopefully this works out._


	5. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

 _A/n: Warning Body Horror._

I heard a knock on my door.

Well, there's really only a few options there, I thought, sitting up in my bed.

The reinforced springs of the bed groaned under my shifting weight. Once upon a time, I might've felt embarrassed by such things, I quickly outgrew those feelings.

I shifted into a sitting cross-legged on the bed. I could have strained my ears to listen and find out who was on the other side. Breathing, heart rate, scent, all of these things could have painted a picture clear as day. But I knew I didn't need any of them. All I needed, was a little patience.

"Amy?" Came the deep voice of my dad, tentative, but hopeful.

The lights were out in my room, and there were about 4 other places I could be this time of night, so it made sense that he'd be uncertain of my presence.

"Here, Dad," I called back, "It's open," I said, my way of inviting him in.

At my words, he twisted open the door and let in a few tiny rays of light from the hallway, all framing his silhouette. He flicked up the light switch with practiced ease, bathing my room in glaring lights. I shifted my eyes, narrowing the pupils and tweaking the photoreceptors with hardly a second thought, adjusting to the sudden change in light far faster than my dad would be able to get accustomed to the dark.

Pulled into a world of light, my room was revealed in all its glory. A glorious mess, that is. I wasn't terribly fond of putting my clothes away, clean or dirty, and instead left them scattered all over the floor. With my sense of smell and memory, it wasn't like it was hard to tell which clothes were clean and which weren't, and I wasn't going to get particularly bent out of shape from a few wrinkles. The more dressy clothes I used for service and other such things were, of course, hanging in the closet, immaculate, but they were held to a higher standard than the rest.

There were very few posters in my room, only two, really. One was a poster for a band I liked, featuring a hooded grey skinned man with glowing red eyes, a shirtless chest showing off his muscular physique, a demented grin that was all teeth, and all of cast in the light of the flames he walked through.

The other poster was of an absolutely adorable jumping spider being absurdly cute, posted right behind the headboard of my bed.

I loved it, in part because mom had gotten it for me, in part because it was adorable in all the right ways, and in part because Taylor hated it in all the best ways. I loved my sister to death, but the way she cringed at the giant spider behind me, every time she came into my room? That would never get old.

I suppose it helped that I had five terrariums scattered around my room with various insects, a snake, some scorpions, and one tarantula. Feeding them all, and the vast collection in the basement, was a serious investment, and one of the reasons I was getting the job at Sanctuary, but it was important to me. Mom had gotten me interested in collecting critters, and most of the stuff I had now I'd gotten from her.

Mom told me that there was something calming about handling simple creatures with simple needs after dealing with all the complexities of humanity in her day to day life. As a kid, I didn't quite understand, but more recently, well…

There was beauty in their simplicity.

Dad, however, had been expecting all this, and after living with mom for so long he'd built up a certain resistance to being creeped out. He didn't so much as flinch at the sight of the tarantula in a box next to the door.

"So Amelia," Dad said, gently closing the door with a quiet _click_ , "Is Taylor still up?"

"No," I shook my head, "She stayed up reading for a little bit, and if I'm hearing things correctly, she's currently snoring into a page of one of her Dresden books."

"Good, good," Dad nodded, "In that case…" He opens the door again, swinging a hand through in invitation. "Care to join me downstairs?"

I gave my dad a suspicious eye. There were a thousand and one places he could be taking this, but the fact he wanted to make sure Taylor was asleep narrowed things down a bit.

"Alright," I said, forcing a casual air to pervade my body. I shrugged, adding, "Hot chocolate?"

"Meetcha halfway with a mocha," He smirked, "I need some coffee for this."

A few minutes later, the two of us were sitting downstairs in the kitchen around the little round table in there. It wasn't meant to hold but two, maybe three, people. Technically, it should have been able to hold a cramped four, but it was shoved over to the wall to make space for the rest of the kitchen. Half the time it was so piled up with random newspapers and junk that it could really only sit one person.

The large overhead fluorescent lights that normally bathed the kitchen in bright white light were off, leaving nothing but the warm orange stove light to illuminate the room. Most of the rest of the house was dark, save for a lamp on in the living room that peeked through the doorways, keeping the atmosphere of night without giving the idea that the house was cold and empty.

The smell of coffee and hot chocolate filled the air, mixing with lingering scents of cooked meat and almond cheese. My reinforced chair held me in a familiar embrace, creaking in just the right ways when I shifted this way and that. All in all, it felt cozy, comfortable, and familiar.

I could see why Dad had taken me here.

"So," Dad began, a large white mug cupped in his hands. He paused for a second to blow across the surface a few times. "How is it?"

I glanced down at my own mug. The steaming brown liquid mixed with clouds of lighter tan in swirling patterns. I could feel the heat radiating from the ceramic, pooling into the cells of my hands. I took a small sip, enjoying the way a simple taste made my nerves light up inside me. The way the intense heat hit my tongue was soothing, both in the in the familiar way I managed it, and in the sensation I could feel running over me.

"Perfect," I said, smiling with closed eyes.

"But it's no Black Ooze, huh?"

My eyes flashed open, my mind whirling into overdrive. For a fraction of a second, I let my emotions slip out. I quickly reigned it back in, pushing my anger and surprise deep inside.

"I'm not sure what you mean?" I said carefully.

Dad slowly arched a brow. "Are we really going to do this?" he said, a sip from his mug hiding his mouth.

I feel the urge to scowl and curse, and bury it deep in my intestines. Instead, I sigh, and say shortly, "Fine."

"Fantastic." he smiles over his cup. "I've got to get up early in the morning so I'd rather not take all night playing run around."

Now I let myself frown. It was hard to get a read on him when he was like this. Was he actually in a good mood? Or was he just smiling to keep from yelling?

"Okay?" I said slowly, testing the waters, "So...what, exactly have you heard?"

"Oh, you know." He shrugged, leaning back in his chair. "A whisper here and there about some hot new drug on the streets. Some say it's actually a tinker-tech virus that turns you into his puppet. Other say that it's really some kind of alien blood, made to incubate their young in whoever drinks it."

"But everyone agrees, it gives you the biggest high this side of the Appalachians. As much as the fear is spreading, the need to escape is even stronger." He took another sip from his mug, "There have also been a few people showing up in the hospital with symptoms of brain damage, broken bones, and a history of drug use. One woman even had her face ripped off. Entirely unrelated, of course."

 _Shit_ , I thought. This was already spinning a bit out of hand, and it'd only been a couple of days. I'd wanted rumors to spread and for it to take up a life of its own, but this…

 _This might be too much._

"So," he said, pulling me from my ruminations, "My question, is when I should expect the invasion to come?"

For a moment, brief and fleeting, I considered denying it. But that'd be stupid. Beyond stupid, really. I'd already confirmed more than enough for him. And dad was smart, he'd already figured out enough in the past couple days to come to me. Obfuscating it anymore wouldn't really help me here.

"How'd you find out about all that?" I said, trying to stall for time as I cobbled together some form of game plan.

"Well, your mother had a _lot_ of connections in her day," he pointed out, circling the mug through the air to accentuate the word, "And while she might be gone, the loyalty she earned isn't. They know me and I know them. So, when they hear something that I might be interested in..." He gestured to himself with both his hands. "They come to me."

 _Which means he probably knows a lot more than he's letting on_. I scowled internally.

"Okay," I shrug, taking another sip of my mocha as I bury my real feelings under my skin. "So?"

"So?" Dad repeated, his brows raised in surprise, "That's what you're going with, so?"

"Yeah," I attempted to brush it off, all while the irritation boiled under my skin. "So what? You said it yourself, they're scum."

"So you think they deserve this?"

"Of course they deserve this. They tried to hurt Emma. They terrorized her, tried to break her, physically and mentally. I'm just doing the same in kind."

"Maybe so, but don't you think it's getting a little out of hand?"

I did, but I didn't need him second-guessing me when I could do this on my own. I had everything under control.

"No." I took another sip, careful to keep my whole body from trembling.

"If you keep this up, the merchant's will escalate."

"Let them. I'll tear them apart from the inside out."

"I thought you said you wouldn't kill."

"I don't need to kill them. I just need to crush their will to resist."

"You're talking about torture."

"Maybe."

"Isn't that going a bit far? They might be scum, but they're human too."

"Are they?"

"Pardon?"

I sneered, unable to keep the irritation buried anymore. So deep was the rage that it was starting to leak out of me. Despite absolute control over my entire body, I couldn't control my own emotions.

"They're scum. Subhuman trash. Have you seen the things they do? Pedophiles, murderers, rapists. They're all no better than the trash they sleep in."

"Starting to sound like the Empire."

"What?!" I hissed, my fingers twitching against the mug. I reigned in my power, careful not to shatter the fragile ceramic. Carefully, inch by inch, I set it down on the table.

"These ideas…" Dad started, swirling his mug, "They're a bit...distressing. You have to realize they're human, Amy. You can't ignore that."

"I realize that," I said through gritted teeth.

He was silent for a moment.

"Maybe this is my fault."

 _What?_

"I don't think I should have told you they were scum"

 _No no no._ I thought, my eyes widening. _He can't take this from me._

"Maybe you aren't really ready for this yet."

Being a human was so stifling. Day in and day out, the same four limbs, the same ten fingers, the same basic configuration. I was tired of just being "Amy" every day, and the first time I get to stretch my legs, he cuts me off?

My skull cracked in half.

My head split open, cut right down the vertical. Teeth erupted from the edges of my skull. My first mouth twisted, sliding further back and shrinking into the cavity of my maw. My face melted, eyes dissolving into basic stem cells for later use, while my hair merged with the rest of my flesh.

My skin went taut, becoming hard and rigid. The skin along my arms split open, cracking into segments and pits. The pits sunk in, base stem cells filling in and turning into ocular components. Pupils, jelly, veins, all began to form round orbs of white and black along my arms. New eyes, to replace the ones I'd lost. Everyone single one locking onto my father's form.

My throat grew, my neck rippling as it all rose up to meet my larger head. My first mouth grew long and thin, like a snake resting in a pipe, and my massive vertical maw clamped around it. The cells in my body decompressed, stretching out to fill more external space and use. Muscles formed, bones grew. My back nearly exploded out of me, rippling with thick cords of muscle. My arms split in two, right down the middle, and grew additional clawed fingers on each limb.

I slammed all four onto the table, sending splinters flying into the air. My maw split open and roared at the man standing before me.

 **"No!"** I bellowed. **"I've been sitting around for over a year doing nothing!"**

My skin blackened, turning into a dark shell. More cells filled in underneath, turning into more plates, and pushing my shell out. At the edges, lines of bioluminescent bacteria colonies grew on my shell, glowing with light blue patterns all over me.

 **"I've been trapped inside this prison of meat and bone for years!"** I towered over him, **"I _R_ _efuse_ to go back!"**

The shell on my back opened up, exposing my innards to the air. Cords of muscles on my back disconnected from my shoulder blades, flopping onto the ground with a wet smack. The meat twisted, the exterior growing thicker, harder, becoming tough, like pink leather. The tendrils wrapped around the legs of the table, anchoring it in place.

 **"You dare try and take this from me!"** I growled, looming ever closer. **"You can't stop me, you can't take this from me. You don't have the strength."**

I rumbled, my maw hanging over his head, **"Though you might make things difficult…"**

My thoughts shifted ever so slightly down. I knew this man couldn't hurt me directly, but he knew of others who could. He could call the PRT, Sanctuary, New Wave…

But only if he was left alone.

I wouldn't kill him. Killing this man was wrong, for some reason. I couldn't remember why exactly. Was it because of last time?

It didn't matter. I could crush him. Destroy him. Killing him would be so easy, consuming him, even easier. There was nothing he could do to stop me, and why shouldn't I. Why shouldn't I take him-

Then a smell hit me. I nearly flinched. Something in me remembered it-

-Oh god.

I dissolved.

Two-thirds of my body turned into liquid biomass. It splattered down on the beat-up table, covering the floor in a flood of clear viscous liquid. Left behind was me, Amelia Hebert, as my human self, drenched in the fluids of my inert flesh. I was hunched over the table, staring wide-eyed at my father, unable to believe what I'd come so close to doing.

Dad stared back, a bottle of mom's perfume in one hand.

In the other, his mug.

He took a sip of his coffee

"You are so grounded," he said.

"What?" I said, dumbfounded.

"I said, you're grounded," he repeated, looking me straight in the eyes with a kind of stone-carved nonchalance.

"That's...that's it?" I said incredulously. "I'm _grounded_?"

"Yep."

"I...did you know this was going to happen?"

"I guessed," Dad said. He placed the bottle of mom's perfume on the table, well within reach in a very deliberate manner. "You've got a bad habit of tweaking your brain."

"No, I…" I ran out of gas on that argument before I even started, "I mean...yeah, I guess…"

"And since scent is such a trigger for memory, I brought this," he said, tapping the top of the bottle. "You already told me about your little, uh, 'repository' of memories. Figured your mother's perfume was probably my best bet there."

"How did you know it would work?"

"I guess I didn't." He shrugged.

"I...you...what…" I rambled, trying to figure out whether to be furious, terrified, or confused, "What would have happened if it didn't work?"

"Things would have gotten really interesting," he said nonchalantly, his wooden chair creaking as he reclined in it. "Fortunately we didn't have to go that far."

"Are you saying you _gambled_ on this?"

"Well…" He stopped to take a long sip of his coffee, loudly slurping it up as he left me in suspense.

"Yeah." He nodded, " Yeah, I did do that."

I stared at him uncomprehendingly.

" _What_?!"

"Amy," Dad began, and I could tell he was trying not to laugh, "I was married to the Matriarch for over a decade, okay? If there are two things I learned, it was when to take a risk, and how to not shit your pants."

"This wasn't just a risk, I almost _killed_ you!" I tried to impress upon him how incredibly close I'd come to crossing the line. He couldn't possibly understand that, could he? There's no way he could know that and still laugh, right?

" _Almost_ ,"

 _Argh!_

" **I-!** " I stopped myself, cutting myself off before I could twist myself in anger again. I took a moment and took a deep breath. I was Amelia Hebert. Adopted daughter of Danny and Annette Hebert, and older sister of Taylor Hebert.

Me.

I was me.

I closed my eyes and said a short prayer. _"When I feel tainted, God, remind me that I am holy."_

After another moment of peace on contemplation, I finally spoke up again.

"So…" I let the word hang there, leaning over the table with my own goop dripping from me as I clenched the wooden sides. My nails dug into the soft wood where so many years of scratches lay before.

Arguing about the previous topic clearing wasn't going anywhere, and I knew my dad well enough to know that he honestly wasn't phased by my little tantrum. So I moved on. "...You're grounding me?"

"For a week," Dad clarified.

"For a week," I repeated as if that would make any more sense.

I looked up at him again, hoping beyond hope that I'd see _something_ in his face.

"Yep." He put the cup down about an inch from the puddle of biomass on the table. His face was hardly a foot from my own, and he didn't even flinch. Instead, he had that same damnable ghost of a smile on his face.

I had the power to tear him apart, and I very nearly did it. So how can he just...sit there?

"That's it?" I questioned, "For...almost attacking you?"

"Actually it's for doing supervillainy without consulting me, as well as damaging the table and making a mess." He gestured to the table in question and the pool of inert me that was surrounding it. "You're cleaning this up by the way."

With a thought, I had all the biomass I'd turned to inert goo reactivate and flow back into me through my feet. It took about as much concentration as, say, swallowing a bit of saliva in your throat.

"Also put some clothes on," he added.

I scrunched my face up. "Why?"

As much as I was in my base Amelia human form, I hadn't actually bothered adding many details below the neck. I was basically a living mannequin.

"Because I said so," he said, smiling in that kind of 'because I'm your dad', way he did.

I rolled my eyes but complied in making the imitation of clothes. Most fabrics were a bit too complicated for me. It wasn't impossible by any means, it just wasn't extremely easy to weave patterns with my fiber-aligned flesh. Given that it was comparatively easy to make my skin look like leather I didn't feel the need to bother with it.

In a matter of seconds, the biomass I'd absorbed back into me was put to use turning into something that resembled that treated skin. When I was done, I'd grown what looked like a leather jacket from my own skin. It _was_ my own skin in nearly every way it mattered, it just happened to also fulfill the visual description of "clothes" to the human eye.

With my clothes formed and my pool of goo reabsorbed, I dropped back into my chair.

"You know I'm still technically naked, right?" I asked, trying to get the last word in.

"It's the principle of the thing," Dad said, leaning back in his chair. "Which is much of why we're having this whole conversation."

I quirked a brow at him. "What do you mean by that?"

"Let's start with how you're dealing with the merchants,"

"But what about what I ju-"

"I'm getting to that," he brushed it aside, patting the air in that patronizing way of his. "First, the Merchants."

"Okay?" I frowned.

"I want you to stop what you're doing," he explained.

I opened my mouth to argue the point, but he spoke over me.

" _But_ ," he said, "You can still go after them."

Alright, now I was confused.

"What?" I said, sagging in the chair.

"The Merchants are scum," Dad started, "And, to be frank, if they all choked to death on their own piss and shit, I wouldn't shed a tear."

"Wait, then why-"

" _However_ ," he stopped me, "If you were the one to do it, I would be heartbroken."

I blinked. _I...what? Why would that…?_

"I don't understand," I said, feeling absolutely lost. They were scum, right? He said they were scum, and he just said I could still go after them. He even said he wouldn't mind if they all died. He just didn't want me to do it?

 _The hell kind of mixed message is this?_

"You see, Amy," Dad said, taking one of my hands in his. The moment our skin connected, I got a blueprint of his entire body. I could see, broadly speaking, everything he was doing. Another copy of his DNA and current status burned its way into my mind. Most importantly, I could see how completely earnest he was being on a cellular level.

"I don't care about the Merchants. I care about you," he told me, "I love you, Amy. You are my daughter in every way that matters, and if you'd gone around killing the Merchants, then it'd mean that I'd lost you too."

I swallowed, hit hard by the sincerity of the statement.

"I…" What do I even say to that? I couldn't find the words or even the right thoughts to respond.

The simple fact of what I was doing and how it was hurting him far more than roaring at his face did. I couldn't even begin to figure out how to express the depths of my regret. I didn't really know why I did it, now that I thought about it. It just...seemed like a good idea at the time. It seemed like a good way to have fun without anyone really dying, without crossing the line I'd laid out for myself.

But I guess that was the problem, wasn't it?

Dad seemed to understand what I meant though. He clasped his other hand on top my own, cupping it between his hands.

"You didn't mean anything by it, did you?" he asked.

"No," I admitted. My throat felt tight, and I almost dispelled the instinctual reaction, but this time I kept it. I needed to feel human right now. "I just needed some information. And I wanted to scare them a bit."

"So you decided to tear off a woman's face, make some Merchants 'disappear', and psychologically torture their friends?"

"No!" I burst out, then winced, "Well, sort of?"

"Not much middle ground there, Amy."

"I...no one got hurt. No one died. I made _sure_ that didn't happen," I explained, "It was all just...tricks, smoke and mirrors, hallucinations."

"You're sure?" he questioned.

"Yes," I nodded emphatically, "I never want to…" I stopped, my mind hiccuping as darker memories were dredged up, unbidden and unwanted. "I never want that to happen again."

"Okay." He patted my hand. "I believe you."

And he did. He knew what I could do, that I could tell what he was really feeling just by touching him. Holding my hand was a sign of trust, that he was putting all the cards on the table now. It...it felt good to know that after everything I'd done, he still trusted me this much.

"Still," he said, "You need to stop this."

"But no one got hurt!"

"You tore a woman's face off," He pointed out.

"I...well…" I had done that. I'd enjoyed doing that. But that was because, well... "She was a pedophile!"

Dad paused, shooting me a silent and stern look that demanded calcification. "I found her hanging around Winslow, and she was...well…"

"Picking up and seducing people around Taylor's age," Dad guessed, sagging a bit. I could feel the way his heart rate rose. I could see his blood pumping more furiously through him, the way his brain lit up in those familiar patterns. He was mad, but suppressing it.

"Yeah…" I answered.

Dad sighed, letting out a hot and angry breath. "That may be true, but it's not about her."

I was about to protest, but I stopped when I remembered what the conversation was about. "It's about me," I said instead.

"Yes." He nodded. "It's about you, Amy."

"She may have deserved to get her face torn off, _may_ ," he clarified, " _But_ , this kind of stuff changes a person. You can't just go in implementing psychological warfare and torturing people and come out the same way you went in."

"Each time you commit an act like this, it makes doing it again that much easier. Now, it's just a scare here and there. Later, it might be broken bodies and broken minds. The more you use pain and fear as a tool, the more it becomes the only tool you want to use."

"And if you do that enough, one day you'll look back in the mirror and you won't recognize yourself. You understand this, right?"

"...Yeah," I said quietly. I felt ashamed now. My anger and indignance snuffed out from the sad and cold truths he'd explained. "...My father said much the same…"

I could feel Dad biting his lip more than I saw it on his face. Dad didn't quite...agree...with my father on most things. I don't think they really liked each other, and I doubt it'd gotten better.

"Well." He swallowed the bitter pill. "He's right in this case. And he should know, it happened to him. He very nearly went beyond redemption. It's...it's why he's not here right now. I don't want to see you make the same mistakes he did."

I looked down at my hands, peeling the skin off and revealing the bone underneath for a moment. I got this power from my father. Did I get this...itch from him too?

"And," Dad interrupted my train of thought, "It's my fault it went this far in the first place."

"No." I shook my head. I wasn't going to take the easy way out of this. " _I_ did this, you didn't make me do any of this."

"But I did set you up to fail," he pointed out.

"I failed all on my own," I countered.

He snorted, pulling back his hand and reclining in his chair. He took a moment to glance at his mug to see if there was anything left inside. He quickly downed the last of it.

"Alright," he said, "You did do that, but I'm at fault too. I should have known better."

 _What does he mean by that?_ I wondered.

"Your mother taught me a lot about parahumans. One of the things I learned, is that if parahumans don't use their powers, especially in an active and challenging way, then they get...a bit stir crazy."

 _Oh_ … I realized. I'd heard that too, at some point, but I'd forgotten it. With that little reminder, a lot of pieces started to click into place.

When he saw my face dad gave me a smile that was very nearly a grimace. "Yeah.."

"It's been nearly a year and a half since the day you got those powers, and about that long, since you've really used them in what I'd call a challenging way," he pointed out. "After all that time, it's not surprising that the first time you pull off the gloves you go a bit...overboard. It's probably not the only factor at play here, but I'd be amazed if it wasn't involved"

"Well, I mean, what about all those times with Aunt Grace and Mr. Smith?" I asked.

"Who?" Dad scrunched up his face in confusion.

"The tutor."

"Oh," Dad's face looked like he'd just thrown up a bit in his mouth. "Him."

He waved his hand through the air in a manner similar to wiping away a bad smell. "A little exercise here and there is nice and all, but you said it yourself. You've been locked in a prison of, uh, 'meat'."

 _I did say that, didn't I?_ I grimaced.

"So," Dad continued, "I think this...ah...endeavor against the Merchants isn't necessarily a bad idea. You do need to breathe, and they're a safer group to go after than the Empire or ABB. As safe as any kind of cape activity in Brockton Bay is, anyways."

"That being said, we need to approach this differently."

"We?"

"Yes, I said we." He smiled a bit. "I do happen to know a thing or two, and you are my daughter in every way that matters. Letting you go off and do this on your own would be more than just irresponsible, I'd be abandoning my duty as a father to guide you."

"Yeah...but...don't you need sleep? I plan on doing most of this stuff at, like, two in the morning."

"What do you think coffee's for?" He chuckled. " 'Sides, I don't plan on staying up all night. Don't really need to anyways. We can plan things out in broad strokes while I'm up, then you can go out while I go to bed, and you can give me a report in the morning. I'll chew over that at work, and come back with something the next night," he explained.

I had to admit, it wasn't a terrible idea. It kind of tied me down a bit more than I'd like, though, and I wasn't sure I wanted to tell my dad everything I had planned.

"I'm guessing that doesn't sound totally awesome to you, huh?" Dad said.

I suppressed the instinct to flinch ruthlessly. "Well...I mean…"

"Look, Amy." He reached out for my hand again. I let him take it, sensing his entire body again the moment we touched. "I'm fine with a little wiggle room, and the last thing I want to do is push you away and lock you up, but you've got to trust me here."

"I mean...was it really that bad though?" I questioned. "I can stop ripping faces off, but that rumor I was spreading was really starting to work."

"Beyond the fact that 'I can stop ripping faces off' isn't something I ever wanted to hear you say," he said with a wry smile, "Yes, it was."

"If the PRT gets wind of it, they might think you're a biotinker on the level of Nilbog or Bonesaw creating some kind of super mind control virus. If they think that, then the kid gloves are off and they'll tear this city apart looking for you, and they might very well get a kill order for you."

I allowed myself to swallow thickly. I hadn't actually considered that. I'd just...had some fun, I thought. No one actually got hurt, and I couldn't actually make a virus that would spread like that, not one that would last, anyway.

"Then there's Taylor."

I perked up. "What?"

"How do you think your sister would react if she hears that you're the boogie monster of the bay? You already know how she felt about Matriarch."

I grimaced. "Okay, that's a good point."

"See?" Dad said, giving me a meaningful look, "You need to think these things out more. Which is what I'll be here for."

"Okay, okay." I huffed, pulling back away from him and reclining in my own chair. He had a point. A very good point, in fact, but that didn't mean I had to like it.

"Ugh," I groaned. "I just...I feel like I finally get to stretch out of the little box I was in, have some _actual_ fucking fun, but now here I go shoving myself back in."

"I know." Dad nodded solemnly. "Which is why I have a proposal."

"How about next weekend, we go on a little hunting trip?"

I blinked. "I fail to see how that solves any of my problems," I said flatly.

"Think about it," he said, "We go out to the woods, just the two of us, and you can be whatever you want. You can...indulge yourself and really get outside the box. All while hunting down some live prey."

"I do like live food," I admitted. I could assimilate living tissue, while I could only salvage dead biomass, "And deer is kosher."

"But don't you need a hunting license for that?" I pointed out.

"Who says I don't have one?" he retorted easily.

"...Why do you have a hunting license?" I asked

He half laughed, half sighed. "That is a long story."

"Speaking of stories," he said, turning the tables on me with a meaningful look, "Why don't you tell me exactly what you did to the Merchants?"

I sighed, mostly to give me more time. "It's...complicated."

"I've got time."

"...Fine." I relented, taking another sip of my coffee as I gather my thoughts and memories.

"It all started Tuesday afternoon…"

* * *

 _A/n: Well hopefully that turned out the way I wanted it to.  
_

 _I can't help feeling like there are better ways I could have explained, approached, or talked about certain topics with these two, and I feel like there are a bunch of great scenes I just couldn't find a way to put in. It's also my third iteration of the whole talk, so I'm currently trying not to think about that.  
_

 _I'd like to thank Trav for his help with this. He says it's all good. I'm tired as fuck right now, so I'm gonna trust him._

 _I tried to include a lot of things that some people have been commenting on, namely setting the stage well and filling in what the characters are doing while they talk. I'm hoping that came across well.  
_

 _This also ran really fucking long. There is **supposed** to be another segment where Amy actually explains what happens in a flashback. I actually have most of that written. But it's current shit. And when finished, it'd probably double the length of this chapter. Since I'm trying to keep my chapter length's manageable, I decided to cut it off here and edit the rest for the next chapter. Which is about half finished, I guess.  
_

 _I also wanted to do a PRT segment originally, but again, space and time. Ugh. Maybe someday I'll come back and reorganize this shitpile, but right now I'm just going to see where my muse takes me before I make any more concrete plans that I'm just going to break again._

 _With that in mind, I'll be seeing you next week._


	6. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

 _A/n: Warning, Body Horror_

* * *

After Taylor and I were done with school on Tuesday, I dropped Taylor off at home and went out.

I told Taylor that I was heading into Sanctuary to talk to them about arranging stuff with Emma and my upcoming job there. Which, technically, was absolutely true. I just didn't go straight there.

Merchants had hurt Emma. Merchants were scum. Merchants were acceptable targets. These were all facts that stuck in my mind. What didn't, was where I could find them.

There were 3 gangs in the city and hundreds of two-bit thugs. As much I might want to grind the Empire and ABB into a bloody pulp with my own two hands, that just wasn't feasible. Not yet, anyway.

And I probably wouldn't be able to take the Merchants out in one fell swoop either. Which meant I needed information and a plan. Maybe the Merchants were worse than everyone thought, and the only thing holding the gang together was duct tape and glue. Maybe they were a front for some secret shady and far more powerful group trying to get roots in BB.

I didn't know, and I didn't even know how I could hurt them.

But, just because I didn't know where the Merchants were didn't mean that I was lost. As I left the house, I made a beeline for Winslow. If I didn't know where the Merchants were hiding out, I could always go where everyone knew the gangs

Arcadia ended the day at 2:30, while Winslow didn't get out until 3:15. Which meant, including transit and dropping Taylor off, I got there right as school was ending. The students were starting to pour out of the neglected high school. Most of them were going to the parking lot, the busses, or waiting for someone to pick them up. I could even see Emma and Charlotte making their way out.

Part of me was tempted to go over, say hi, and see what they knew about the gang situation around here. But something about that struck me as...rude, or at the very least awkward. They weren't my friends, really, and while I did sort of care about them reaching out like this seemed a bridge too far. Still, I could keep an eye on them.

 _Well hey there, Sasha_ , I thought to myself as I noticed that black girl who was with Emma the other day, _Or was it Sophie?_

I was still a little suspicious of her, but I couldn't see her doing anything particularly distressing in the crowd. She didn't look happy, but given she was a black girl at a school that had neo-nazi's-in-training, that wasn't too surprising. Hell, take away the literal nazis and Brockton Bay was still a shithole, there was probably any one of a thousand reasons she wasn't happy, so I didn't bother myself with it.

Moving on, I looked for any signs of Merchants. I didn't precisely know what I was looking for, which is why I was getting a nice bird's eye view. In fact, I didn't really expect to get much on my first day. I was planning on just doing a simple little flyby, seeing what I could see, and coming back the next day. If that didn't work, I could always check in with Emma and Charlotte to see if they knew anything.

 _Although_...I considered, _How would I do that without seeming suspicious?_

A question for another day, I reasoned, and given what I was seeing so far, I'd have to leave it for another day. There wasn't much activity that looked overtly suspicious or gang related. Well, beyond the large masses of people in colors walking. But I couldn't just shake them down because they looked vaguely suspicious. I had to have a reason. Well, sort of a reason, anyways.

I was just about to leave when I spotted something from the corner of my eye. Something very interesting.

 _Well well well_ , I thought, _What do we have here?_

* * *

"Well don't you two look lovely?"

Two kids, a boy and a girl who I pegged as being around Taylor's age, had decided to take a shortcut hom through an alley. Maybe they were new to town, maybe they'd taken this shortcut many times, maybe they simply thought it could never happen to them. Whatever it was, it was a mistake they wouldn't soon forget.

The alley was in an area of dilapidated and partially abandoned housing. It was assumed that this was Merchant territory, but it's not like the Merchants had hard borderlines. They were like pests, they just festered in every niche they could find. Including this alley.

The woman who stepped out from one of the many side-paths in the alley was probably in her mid-twenties. Her basic features indicated some south American roots, lightly tanned skin, straight black hair, genome markers, etc. She could be considered attractive to most, her half-shaved long hair with pink highlights and tight crop-top certainly made her stand out in a crowd. The long black vest she was wearing looked like it could hide some small weapons or drugs, and her baggy pants could definitely stash a variety of implements.

She ambled up to the two teens, swaying her hips in what I assumed was a seductive manner.

"You two look like a cute couple," she said, "So adorable and young."

The boy held his arm out, in what I guess was some vain attempt to protect the girl. "Leave her out of this," he said in a shaky and completely confident voice. It sounded like he'd heard one too many lines of Protectorate Propaganda and was trying to act like a hero.

He had balls now, but I had my doubts it would last too long.

"Oh, don't be like that, kiddo." She winked at the boy. "I just want to help you out."

"H-help us out?"

"Yeah." She shrugged. "you two look like you haven't even popped the cherry yet."

The pair blushed.

"I-I, well, er…" the boy stammered.

"Tommy!" The girl hissed, pulling his arm as she tried to walk back.

The boy tried to back away from the woman as well, but the woman match him step for step, gaining on him.

"Hey hey hey, now." The woman held up her hands in a placating gesture. "Calm down, guys. My name's Diane, and I've got a great offer for you."

"Free lessons." She smiled. "Your first time's always the roughest, but fortunately you got good ol' Diane to help you out."

Before Tommy could flinch back, Diane walked up and cupped his chin. "So what do you say? A fine night for you and your girl? I promise you'll be closer than ever before."

"Closer?" he said, flush rising as Diane got even closer.

"Hey!" the girl shouted, trying to get around Tommy. She took a swing at Diane, but the woman dances back with a giggle.

Diane pulled out a needle from her vest, filled with some kind of dark fluid. "Why do we have to fight about this, when we can have some fun instead?"

"I just need to give you some candy, and then the fun can-"

I punched her in the face.

Diane fell down, laid out by the force of the haymaker. I'd be lying if I said that seeing that...deviant forcing herself on a girl Taylor's age didn't raise my hackles. With that thought in my mind, laying this bitch out felt damn good.

"Where the fuck..?" She groaned, cupping her cheek.

I smirked. It was funny how many nooks and crannies you could hide yourself in when your body was whatever you wanted it to be.

"Oy!" I shouted in a deeper voice than normal, turning to the two stunned kids, "You shits get out of here."

"I-I-I" Tommy stammered.

"Yes, Sir, thank you, Sir," The girl nodded fervently, pulling Tommy to his feet and running away.

I smirked. I hadn't wanted to go around beating up merchants looking like Amelia Hebert. That was just asking for trouble. And when you could control every cell in your body, why on earth you settle for something as mundane as a simple change of clothes?

Instead of a tall, freckled, white girl with long frizzy brown hair, I looked more...androgynous. I had a masculine, yet somewhat boyish, face and frame. I wasn't quite as tall either, though I'd given myself very lean and defined muscles. My hair was a long and straight blond that reached down to my shoulders. Combined with my vibrant blue eyes and flawless pale skin, I looked a bit like a poster child for the Empire.

Given I was also wearing a bright red dress shirt under a black jacket, pants, and boots, it was an easy mistake to make. Which is exactly why I'd picked it. Much as I hate the Empire, this wasn't a direct attack at them. While I was intending to look like I could be Empire, that was more of a whim. If I was going to look like someone else while doing dirty deeds, why not someone who could stand to be punched in the face?

And if they didn't think I was Empire? Oh well. Didn't matter to me. There was nothing to connect me to Amelia Hebert either way.

"Good girl." I smiled at the young couple as they ran away.

Turning back around, I saw Diane picking herself up off the ground.

"Bob! Garette!" she called out, wiping a line of blood from her lips as she got back up shakily on her feet, "Where are you two?!"

No one answered.

"Looks like you've got some flakey friends." I smiled. "I bet they're sleep'n on the job right now."

Though that might have something to do with chemical soup currently swimming through their veins. I thought.

I'd taken so long to intervene in the first place because I'd been busy taking out her reinforcements. It wasn't hard to do it, by itself, but knocking them unconscious without alerting anyone as a lot easier said than done. Which is why I'd make the sedatives in the first place.

It'd taken a bit to come up with just the right chemical mixture to get a nice fast-acting sedative that I could make purely through biological processes, especially one that was completely safe. Melatonin was helpful, but it was far from the only component in the mix.

"Fine," she growled, "I don't need them to deal with a twink like you." She pulled out a knife from her vest and licked her lips.

I eyed the knife and snorted. "Oh no, knife," I taunted as I paced back and forth in front of her, "What are you going to do, stab me?"

Diane snarled, then jabbed the knife at me. I stepped backward to avoid it, but then she lunged forward. The blade of her knife plunged into my gut as she crashed into me.

I let out a grunt that was more from my chest cavity being compressed than anything so base as pain or discomfort.

"It's a shame such a pretty boy like you has to die in a shitty alley like this," she said with a smug smirk, twisting the knife inside me, "But that's what you get for ruining my day." With her last words, she wrenched the knife free and left me to bleed out.

Or...she tried to.

"What?" she said, confused as the knife refused to come free.

"Oof, it's stuck in there real tight, isn't it?" I said, completely unphased by the blade buried where my intestines were supposed to be. A nasty, painful, and likely fatal injury if I was a normal person. "Here, let me give you a hand,"

I reached down, wrapping a hand around her hand at the hilt of the blade. The instant my skin brushed against her own, I saw a glimpse of her entire genetic map. When my hand enveloped hers, the scan got deeper. I could see every cell in her body, all moving and working together. I could see the signs of drug use, the way her brain lit up in fear. I could also see the very pointed lack of the familiar blank spot in her head.

 _Got ya I_ smirked.

I twisted it this way and that, before finally tearing the blade out of my gut sideways, ripping a much bloodier hole in me than she'd been aiming for. With the blade out, I slipped my hand out of her grip, letting her have the knife back. Not much she could do to me with it anyways.

Diane stumbled back in shock as the man she'd just tried to stab had actually made the wound exponentially worse without so much as flinching. She looked up at me with wide eyes and a slack jaw, her expression of shock so deep and profound I couldn't help but laugh.

"I really don't understand you people," I chuckled, fingering the gaping wound in my gut idly. Blood poured from the wound, but it was all still me. There'd been a few cell deaths, but it was barely a rounding error for me, most had just been pushed around. Bleeding out was about as dangerous for me as drooling all over the floor. Arguably even less than that, actually, since I could always just re-absorb the blood again.

"What the fuck?" Diane said, staring at the way the blood pooled at my feet, at the way skin and a few rolls of meat flopped out of the hole as I played with the wound.

"I mean, you know capes are a thing, right?" I continued, stepping towards her slowly as I pulled at the fake intestines I'd put in there. "I don't understand why you'd actually go around terrorizing people. What the fuck would you do if they triggered?"

"I-if they what?" She sputtered, backing away from me, holding up her knife like it could ward off evil.

"Ah," I said, removing my bloody hand from my chest. I pulled it up and snapped a wet finger at her in realization, flinging crimson specks into the air. "That's right, you don't know. You keep doing it because you don't realize that every single time you mug someone, they could turn into the next Lung and eat you alive."

I giggled at the thought. "Well, I guess this kind of a wake-up call for you, huh?"

"The fuck are you?!" Diane roared, reaching into her vest for something, "You some kind of new cape?"

"Well duh." I smiled, "Most people tend to die when they're stabbed."

"Shut up!" She barked, panicking as the situation spiraled out of her control. She pulled out a large revolver, waving it threateningly at me. "Shut up or I'll shoot you!"

"Awe." I pouted, holding my hands up to play along. "I thought we had a gentleman's agreement?"

"Here's a gentleman's agreement for you," She snarled, "You answer my questions, and I don't kill you."

"Am I supposed to shut up, or answer your questions?" I smirked.

I enjoyed toying with her like this. Playing along as I made a game of her hopes and expectations. Stringing her along was fun, in a way, giving just enough rope to hang herself was a careful balancing act. The fact that she slowly seemed to be slowly figuring it out herself was only icing on the cake. I could smell the pungent scent of fear radiating off her, slowly at first, but growing larger and larger. It was intoxicating.

"You speak when you're spoken too." She cocked the hammer of the gun, the metal loudly clicking as it turned into place.

"And if I don't…?" I asked, the bright smile on my face never leaving.

"Then I'll blast your brains out," she said coldly.

"Oh?" I cocked my head to the side. "Stabbing me hasn't worked out so well. What makes you think shooting me will end any better?"

"Because everyone knows that powers come from some kinda special brain tumor." she said, "It's all thanks to that thing in your brainpan. Evolution or something. I don't know. But I do know that I can hurt you."

"Can you?" I baited her, giving her my most devilish smirk.

BANG

My forearm exploded just above my wrist. My left hand fell to the ground, two bloody spikes of bone sticking out of the wrist. My own arm was a bloody stump that looked like a popped sausage in the microwave.

I stared at the sheared limb. "Huh," I was actually impressed.

"You're a regenerator," she continued, "Not a normal brute. You can just heal from wounds, but you're just as squishy as everyone else."

"And," she added, tapping the side of her head with her free hand, "I'm betting if I get you right between the eyes, you won't be able to regenerate from me painting this alley with your brain."

"Ooooh~, sounds like a gamble." I smiled invitingly. "Either it works, and you live, or it doesn't and you're helpless in front of a cape you can't hurt."

"Just tell me who sent you," Diane growled, thrusting the gun at me threateningly, "And why you're here."

"What if I said I sent myself?" I said rhetorically.

She laughed. "Really, new little cape boy?"

"Well, today is my trial run," I admitted with a smile, my arms spread out wide. As an arrant thought, I decided to taper off the bleeding of the stump on my arm and the hole in my gut. "Though, I'm willing to admit that I came here looking for information."

"Trial run, huh?" she said, "I'm betting that you're the newest little nazi. Got money, got looks, even got powers, so they decided to send you after the 'bottom of the barrel Merchants'. After all, they don't matter, right? They're just scum, right? How close am I?"

I snorted.

"Okay." I shrugged. "If that's what you want to think. But it sounds like you already have all your answers. Why ask me anything?"

"Who says I'm done?" Diane said with narrowed eyes, "Maybe I'm just getting warmed up?"

"Hmm." I entertained the idea for a moment, letting it show on my face, before shaking my head, "Nah, I think I'm about ready to wrap things up here."

I stepped forward.

"Hey!" she barked, shaking her gun again, "Don't you dare move! I'm not done with you yet!"

"Ah, but I'm just about done with you." I said, taking another step, "You see, I've got a few questions of my own."

"If you don't stop, I'll fucking kill you!" she growled, the gun shaking in her hands.

"If you have the balls." I smirked, walking steadily and purposefully. "But I don't really feel like that'll end well for you."

"If you keep walking, all you'll be feeling is hot lead putting your lights out."

"That, or mildly annoyed." I shrugged, taking another step. "But go ahead, flip that coin."

I stepped forward again.

The gun shook in her hand.

I smiled.

I took another ste-

A chunk of lead crashed into the top of my skull at around one and half times the speed of sound. It slammed into a pocket of gel where my brain was supposed to be. The gel caught the bullet, bleeding of its speed and power before it could leave my skull or tear it to pieces.

I stumbled back, put off balance by the force hitting my head for a moment, before re-adjusting and catching myself. I tilted back up, moving the misshapen hunk of lead inside my head as I recalibrated. I spat it back up into my hand, staring at it for a second before looking up at the woman who'd shot me in the face.

I whistled. "Nice shot."

Diane gaped. "What the fu-"

A spider jumped on her face.

A very pale spider with five legs and a bleeding stump of a thorax.

Her muffled screams filled the alley as my detached hand clamped down over her mouth.

I laughed, a deep throaty thing that came from somewhere inside my darkest thoughts.

"Ah, finally, sweet silence." I smiled, walking up to her.

Diane flailed, trying to rip my hand off her face, but it was useless, my grip far too tight. She tried cutting it off, but the blade just slipped through, flesh healing back together as soon as the blade left. She aimed her gun at the hand, ready to take the ultimate measure.

I kicked her legs out from under her. Her head slammed on the ground, the impact shaking her enough to drop the gun. I kicked it away before she could grab it.

He hands clawed over the detached limb attached to her face. She desperately cried and scrabbled at it, trying to get it off. I stood over her, a faint smile on my face as I saw her writhing on the ground.

"Now Diane," I said softly, "I'm going to need you to listen carefully."

She thrashed wildly, her face turning blue.

"I have some questions," I said, leaning over to meet her eyes as she panicked, "And I'd like to pick your brain on them."

She was about to curse out at me, I could tell, but I held up a hand to stop her. "Ah ah, you're not going to need to speak for this."

"You're not really going to need to speak ever again."

At first, she looked at me confused. When she tried to open her mouth again, she understood. She understood now, because now she had no lips to scream.

My hand melted together with her face. My flesh becoming her flesh, and her flesh becoming mine. The surface of my hand invaded the cells of her body, infesting her skin with a virus. Unlike most viruses, this one infected cells not to merely produce more viral entities, but to make the cell mine.

And every single cell that was mine, was me.

I was in the hand detached from my body, there was no disconnect for me despite the distance, and now I was in her face. In fact, now there was no hand. There was only the smooth surface of her featureless face.

My face, now. "Now hush, my dear," I said, brushing a finger over the smooth surface where her lips once laid. I still let the skin of what was once her face send signals to her brain, so I knew she could feel it, "No more tears."

My skin melted over her eyes, sealing her world in a tomb of flesh. As her cries were muffled and tears sealed, I wormed my way through her skin. Penetrating deeper and deeper, diving under the layers of flesh and bone. Tendrils of meat wrapped around her skull, a few boring through to poke at her brain. Not corrupt it, not devour it, just..get a reading on it.

"Only dreams now."

* * *

"Hold up," Dad sighed, stopping me with a hand. His other went massage his brow.

"What?" I questioned, kind of annoyed that he'd interrupted my story.

"I can already tell I'm going to need scotch for this," He said, getting out of his chair.

I cringed. "it's not that bad...is it?"

"Jesus christ, Amy," Dad half laughed. "Let me put it like this,"

He moved to the back pantry of the kitchen. The pantry wasn't actually in the kitchen, per se, it was in a small room adjacent to the kitchen, and shared the space with our washer and dryer. While he passed out of my line of sight, I could still hear him just fine.

"You are definitely your mother's daughter."

"I am?" I blinked.

"Have I told you about The List?" he said, still out of view.

"No…?"

"Well, long story short, I made a list of things she wasn't allowed to do unless certain criteria were met."

"...Like?"

"Oh, you know, the basics." He said, coming back into the kitchen with a bottle in his hands. He placed it on the table with a weighty clack and moved over to the cupboards, "Don't torture people with bugs. Don't make people choke on bugs. Don't drink your own eyeball juice."

"I...what?" I had no idea what to do with that information.

"Yeah." He snorted, picking up two glasses and walking back to the table. "I loved Annette to death, but she could be really fucking horrifying. Not surprising considering she had her powers for what...20 years?"

Dad sat down and shook his head. "When you spend that long with powers like hers, especially in as shitty a world as the one we live in, sometimes you lose perspective. An "effective and legitimate strategy" for you would be considered cruel and sadistic torture that only the vilest and sick of villains would use for others."

"So the List was your way of reining her in?" I guessed.

"Yep." He nodded, placing the two glasses on the table and pouring the amber liquid into each. "So we should probably make a List for you. Or guidelines or what have you."

He pushed one glass my way and picked up the other for himself.

I gasped in exaggerated shock. "Alcohol! But dad, I couldn't possible-"

"Just drink the scotch, Amy," he said tiredly, giving me a flat and unimpressed stare, "We both know you're the only one who decides if you're going to be drunk or not."

I pouted. He was right, of course. We'd had this discussion a while ago and this was far from my first glass. Managing alcohol and the ethanol inside it was a bit tricky for me, and part of it was the simple chemistry of the issue fiddling with my brain. That said, mastering the art of not being drunk was far from impossible when every single cell was under my direct control, and the trick of doing it was something I'd long since mastered. Doing it these days didn't even take a second thought.

Didn't mean he had to ruin my fun, though.

"Party pooper," I said, sullenly grabbing my own glass. At this point drinking with Dad was more about the psychological benefits of sharing a meal, or drink, with someone else. That, at the very least, could still affect me.

"That's me," he said, a self-deprecating smile on his lips, "Pooper of parties, spoiler of fun. It's the second thing we learn in dad school."

"Oh?" I raised a brow, "What was the first?"

"Show no fear." He grinned, raising his glass to me.

I snorted, deciding to humor him and toasted back. "Sure dad."

I took a sip of the scotch. The wave of flavor, and the smooth texture was a familiar one that brought back many memories. I spent a moment just processing the information. I immersed myself in the old sensations, in all the chemical reactions happening inside me. They couldn't overwhelm me, and I still had an awareness of my surroundings, but it was nice to just...feel something. Not think, not plan, just feel.

"So…" he said, pulling me out of my ruminations.

I looked back up at him. I saw the weight in his brown eyes, the way the humor had drained out of him, and straightened up. It wasn't all gone, there were still bits of it there, but I could instantly tell that we were turning back to the serious matter at hand.

"What happened with the Black Maggots?" he said, shooting me a look as he swirled his glass of liquid amber.

"Ah…" I said. I'd gotten off track from that, perhaps in shame, perhaps in fear, perhaps in simple empty-headedness. "I suppose I forgot to go over the part where it got a bit dark."

"So the part where you ate a woman's face wasn't dark?"

I winced. "I mean...technically I became her face."

"Oh, yes. My apologies, that's much much better."

I sucked in through my teeth. He had a point. At the time, it made sense. Seemed right, pragmatic, fun...though I suppose this is why he came up with the List in the first place.

"Okay," I began, "So it all started after I took what I wanted from Diane's mind."

"You ate her brain?"

"No!"

"Amelia..."

"Well...not most of it?"

"Goddammit, Amy."

"Look, I left all of her faculties intact. She can still do all the things normal people can, there are just some...holes...in her memory. Holes that I used to find, uh, vulnerabilities in the Merchant's operations."

"I think I just found some new things to add to The List," Dad quipped glumly as he raised his glass to take another drink.

"So," I continued, ignoring him, "I became Diane. Since I wasn't going to be staying long, I didn't need to immerse myself that much in the gang, but I did use her truck and some fancy containers they had laying around to set up a trap."

"A trap?"

"Yep." I nodded, equal parts nervous and excited. "A trap filled with me."

He looked at me for a long moment, his glass hovering inches from his lips. He gave me a flat stare over the glass. Then, ever so slowly, he slid his eyes to look at the nearly full bottle of scotch laying on the table. He placed his glass on the table and picked up the bottle. He raised it to his lips, paused, then gave me a pointed look.

"I just want you to know, you're doing this to me," he said, then proceeded to take a swig straight from the bottle.

"Well, at least you have a lot of experience with mom..." I offered with a helpless shrug.

"That's the only thing stopping me from doing shots," he said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve and putting the bottle back on the table, "Now go on."

"Right."" I pursed my lips. "So I filled some containers with, uh, well, me. Which I, uh, turned black for effect."

"Of course, of course," He nodded along, "You know, as one does."

"And then I went to a distributor's house, Jack's house. They called it a distribution center, but it was really just an abandoned garage. I went there, talked with him, convinced him to get his friends together to plan a party and try some new drugs-"

"And let me guess," Dad cut me off with a raised finger, "You were the drugs?"

"Yes," I nodded, "I was the drugs."

"So then they…"

"Then they all took shots of me. Just, uh, put some me in a vial, made the me in the vials all spooky and dark. Writhing and stuff. You know, to set the mood."

"Right, right. To set the mood."

"So once they drank me, I was inside them," I paused, stalling for time by taking another drink. There really wasn't a good way to phrase the next part, so I just tried to spit it all out as fast as possible.

"So from there, I dispersed myself inside them. I also released some hallucinogens that also induced paranoia, along with some other effects. Part of me wormed its way under their skin to give a kind of wriggling effect. But most of it just kind of hung around in their stomach waiting to be used.

"From there, they were all primed. Each of them was hallucinating and on the edge of rampant uncontrolled paranoia, they just needed something to fear. So I provided the trigger.

"As Diane, I imitated a freakout where there were worms or maggots writhing around inside my stomach. I cut it open, causing them to spill out all over the floor as a massive tide of black writhing parasites. That acted as the trigger which got them all thinking about Black Maggots inside them. From there, the cocktail I'd put inside them went off, causing them to imagine what I'd supplied.

I also prodded them here and there to help facilitate the illusion."

"Mhm," Dad nodded along, humming through the bottle as he took another sip. When he pulled it back, he smacked his lips and said, in an almost sardonic tone, "Is that it?"

"Uh...no?"

"No...no, of course not." He smiles in that empty way of his. "Alright, where else does this train wreck go?"

I winced _. It hadn't been that bad, right?_

"Well, most of them went crazy, as I expected. But the first guy who drank me, his name was Clank, he just passed out. Which was fine, because then I just used some of the, uh, spilled 'me' to make a simulacrum of him."

"You made a clone?"

"Well...more of a puppet?" I said, unsure of myself, "I mean, it's all just me, so…"

Dad was silent. Instead he just gave me a pinched look with a cocked head that silently said, "At what point, did you think this was a good idea?"

I sucked through my teeth, "Yeah...and, uh...then I had the puppet of Clank pretend to be possessed by the black maggots. And, uh, trying to infect the others and make them hosts."

He laughed. Not the good kind of, "Oh this is so funny," laugh. It was the kind of laugh you had when you heard something so incredibly stupid and terrible that you couldn't help but laugh at how bad it was.

"Jesus Christ Amy." He wiped a hand over his face, "You've only been at it for a week."

"Ah...yeah…" I grimaced, "I've, uh, kinda been doing that a lot, in other places. And stuff. And there's more, and-"

I was rambling now, and we both knew it. I was sure I'd ruined something. I thought everything had been fine. That I was doing what needed to be done and having fun doing it. No one got hurt except for the pedophile, no one died, all was good. But now, sitting in front of my dad, having him weigh judgement on my actions? I couldn't help but doubt it all.

Where had it all gone wrong.

"Ok," Dad said, reaching out with one arm to hold my hand. He still had a small smile on his face. "You fucked up."

I nodded woodenly, trying to clamp my emotions up. I could read Dad's biology, and inside him was a whirlwind of emotions too. Unlike me, however, they were far less..intense. They were there, but they weren't ruling him. And above most of them was what I could only describe as resigned amusement.

"You fucked up bad," he continued, "but," He paused to look me in the eyes. I could feel the sincerity in every cell of his body. "Not too bad. We can and will make this better. Understand?"

"Yes dad," I said quickly, relief flooding me.

"Okay," he pulled his hand back, cutting off the connection. "Now it's…" He paused to look at his watch. "About 1:00 am. So I'm going to bed. First, though, I'm getting the List."

He moved to get out of his chair, but swayed a bit with his first step. Before he could blink I was beside him, steadying him. He braced against me with an outstretched arm and yawned loudly.

"God, I'm tired." He blinked, then chuckled. "And a little tipsy."

"Let me help you to bed," I said, trying to move his body around so he could lean on me.

He pushed me off him. "I'm tired and tipsy, not old and infirm. I can walk myself."

I frowned, but I could see he was going to be stubborn about this. Him and his damn pride.

"Now." He straightened out his shirt. "I'm gonna get your mother's old List, and I want you to look it over and come up with all the ways you fucked up, and how to not fuck up like that in the future while I'm asleep. When I'm awake, we can tackle the issue for real before you head out for, uh…" He rolled his hand as he searched for the word. "Saturday Service."

"That's not what it's called," I snorted, unwilling to keep the grin from my face.

"It is now," he said as he cracked his back. "Now you clean up while I get your homework."

I rolled my eyes, " Okay Dad,"

"Night Amy," he said, stumbling tiredly away as he spoke. He was already in next room when he muttered the next part.

I still heard him.

"Love you too, Dad."

* * *

 _A/n: Ok, so this took a bit longer to make than I thought it would._

 _It as also far longer than I thought it would be._

 _Like, it's my longest chapter. By accident._

 _I'd planned it out as a short couple things. Then when I was done it was fucking 6.2 K. Fucking how?_

 _Ugh._

 _I'm glad this is just a hobby I do for fun, because I've little doubt that if this was actually supposed to be something published I'd be spending weeks and weeks trimming my own bullshit per chapter down to the most necessary bits._

 _But I'm also done going over what I'm calling the Black Maggot incident. It took two chapters longer than I'd originally expected, and all three chapters involved are the longest chapters in the fic so far. I don't think I need to spend more time on it._

 _That said, I wouldn't be surprised to find out I missed stuff in the numerous edits and rewrites I did for this thing before posting. It might even look a bit patchworky. I hope not, but who the fuck knows. I know what it's supposed to read and look like, so my opinion is biased and doesn't work an audience perspective._

 _I'm also quite sure that there have been formatting issues that came up when I transferred this from googledocs I haven't had time to correct. Sorry about that._

 _Anyways, I've got to get to work, which during peak season is a fucking bitch and a half. Good god. Hopefully, when I come back to the internet at the end of the night I'll be seeing good news._

 _Or, you know, I fucked something up again. That could happen too._


	7. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

* * *

 _My Dearest Amelia_

 _If you ever decide to follow in my footsteps, or even forge your own path as a cape, know that I will always be proud of you._

 _However, before you lock yourself into any one route, you must prepare. You must be sure of the path you are embarking upon. Time is an unyielding god. Once you do something, you will never be able to take it back._

 _Either commit to something with all your being, and never look back with regrets, or you pick your battles very carefully. In each case, there is something vitally important you must do for yourself._

 _A Code of Conduct, Rules of Engagement, Laws of Honor. Whatever you may call them, you need to put them in place to govern yourself._

 _Most civilized society is composed of implicit rules. It exists because humanity, as a collective, has agreed that certain things are improper and unacceptable. When one becomes a parahuman, however, the "rules" change._

 _There is some ineffable aspect about becoming a parahuman that sets them apart from most humans. Perhaps it is the stress and trauma that comes from triggering in the first place? A crucible that forges our souls into more impulsive reflections of our former selves? Or maybe it is the power we have tied to our very minds, the ability to have something completely unique to us, something pushing us beyond the limits of humanity?_

 _Whatever the case, before a trigger, you are one person. Afterwards, a different being emerges. One not so constrained by the limits of human nicesties or common sense. For good or for ill, parahumans will consider the meager laws of man as guidelines, mere stepping stones in their bids for power and glory. Rare is the parahuman who can keep themselves from diving into the murky waters of cape culture._

 _I am far from the exception in this, and in writing these journals, I look back and consider it my downfall. I cannot say I truly regret what I've done, the lives I've taken and families I've ruined, but neither do I relish them._

 _I have lasted as long as I have because I do not allow myself to fall into a net of false security. I have power, yes, but even for all my individual strength, I am nothing but a pebble in the ocean of humanity. If I step too far, make too many waves, I shall be crushed on all sides. I have picked my battles and carved out what little corner of happiness I can._

 _The seduction of greater wealth and power sings to me. It would be so easy. Delving into the trades of flesh and pleasure would surely provide me with riches and influence beyond compare. But that invites greater challenge, greater risk to all I care about. And to what end? At what cost?_

 _Your mother, your_ _ **birth**_ _mother believes in laws beyond that of man, commandments from God himself that supersede anything our flawed minds can come up with. While I don't quite agree with her on all things spiritual, I must admit that there are rules, edicts etched into our very nature as humans. These things go beyond simple things judged in a court of law._

 _Many have tried to tried to quantify them, to write them down as hard rules that can be properly organized and structured. And yet, they always seem to fall short of what we feel as men._

 _I have attempted to craft my own code of honor. Axioms by which I've constructed the masquerade known as Marquis. It is my burden and my foundation. Without my honor, I would be lost, adrift in a sea of meaningless violence and sadism. Drifting from conflict to conflict, only chasing the next high, the next level of power. With each power grab, I would only seek more, never to be satisfied._

 _Instead, I made anchors, things to hold my way. My honor, my code, was one such anchor. Another, your mother. Soon, you too became an anchor in my life._

 _I plead to you, my dearest Amelia, create these anchors. Find or create pillars to tie your desires down. As a great man once said, "If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything"._

 _It is for that reason, among others, that I have attempted to leave in the care of Annette Hebert. While we do not see eye to eye on everything, even most things, there is a measure of respect between us. She is a woman of honorable principals, someone who stands for something noble, and damn anyone who stands in her way._

 _For once in my life, I pray. I pray that you are safely in her care. I pray that she can raise you to be the woman I know you have the potential to be. I pray that she can succeed where this old fool has failed._

 _Because, my dearest Amelia, for all that I will hold onto my honor unto my dying breath, I know that it will lead me to an early grave. For that, I only hope you can forgive me._

 _Your father, Batholemew Lavare._

* * *

There was a knock on the door.

"Amy?" My dad's voice slurred through the door, "You in there?"

"It's open, Dad." I called out, forcing my throat back to normal. I wiped the tear streaking down my face away and restructured the cells in my face to wipe away any sign of them. I folded up my father's journal and put it back on the dresser.

By the time I was done, Dad opened the door wearing an exhausted face, one hand clutched around the doorknob, the other a large mug of black mud so hot I could feel the heat from here. He walked in, closed the door behind him, looked up at me, and stopped.

"...Why?" he comments dryly as he stares at me.

My heart skipped a beat. For a second I thought he was talking about the journal, that his distaste of my Father was deep enough that he disapproved of me even reading his journals. Then I noticed the way his eyes flitted to me. Well…

Both of me.

I looked at him and offered a sheepish smile. As did the _other_ me.

I was standing in front of the dresser of my room, wearing a long simple and clean black dress of knitted silk. The bottom of the skirt came down to my ankles, while the top came up to a turtleneck along with long sleeves reaching my wrists.

And on top of the dresser, staring back at me, was another, smaller, Amelia Hebert wearing a mirror of my own apparel. An Amelia Hebert who was also me, though physically aged to about seven. Since I was also her, I saw was staring at both dad and me, and also me, at the same time.

"It's better than a mirror?" I offered from the older me.

"So you made a mini-me...to have a mirror?" He questioned.

"And I can adjust my the fit and stuff from another perspective?" The younger me offered. "And, I mean, we're both me."

"Technically," Older me added, "I'm more me than she is, since I have most of the biomass in me, but she's still got enough in her to be a sentient me in her own right."

The more I tried to explain all of this to Dad, the more I felt like it wasn't making any sense. But it was just so hard to put into human terms. How was I supposed to explain that I was the same 275 Trillion cells he'd talked to last night, just..divided into a bigger and smaller form. How was I supposed to explain being both? How did you explain to your father that, if you really wanted, you could be a dozen smaller you's that were all still the same individual you?

"But we're both still me so-" I tried to explain from the younger me.

"You know what," Dad cut me/us off with a raised hand and a strained smile "I'm too tired to care."

He gestured his mug in my direction with that same smile, "How'd the list go?"

"...Good?" I said, slightly worried about the mental health of my dad. Then felt guilty because that probably wasn't helped by that fact that I was kind of talking to him with another younger version of me I'd made out of spare biomass.

I gave him another sheepish smile while the younger me hopped off the dresser and started cleaning up the room.

"So…?"

"So I have the list!" I perked up, holding out an open hand, which the younger me placed a notebook in.

His eyes narrowed as he scrutinized the two of us. "...How often do you do this?"

"Well, I mean, normally I just make, like, a mouse or something," I admitted, "But then I did the thing with Clank, and I was like, 'Why not another me?'. But then I didn't want an equal division, because then which one would be me, right?"

"...I'm tempted to add this to the list," He said before taking another long sip of coffee.

"It's not that bad, right?" The older me pouted.

"Please daddy?" Younger me pleaded.

" _That_ " He gestured to younger me, "is not helping. Kinda disturbing."

" **How is this disturbing?"** I asked through the younger me innocently, while also twisting the vocal cords and air cavity inside her to produce a deep, distorted, and inhuman voice.

Dad stopped, his mug an inch from his lips, and just stared at the younger me with wide eyes.

I had to suppress the smiles on both of our faces.

" _Not again"_ I heard him whisper under his breath.

"Dad?" Older me inquired.

"Right...right," He blinked, finally taking a sip from the mug at his mouth. "So that list?"

"Well, one of the things my Father mentioned in his journals about revenge was there were several ways to go about it. One of those ways was to instill as much fear and horror in possible as quickly as possible in the people who wronged you so that they might know to never do it again." I explained.

"Hmm…" Dad's face twisted into a frown, "Sounds like you're missing some important factors there."

"Heh, yeah…" The older me rubbed the back of my head nervously. "I uh, forgot to account for the fact that you kinda of need a reputation to pull it off well. People need to know what they did and who they crossed, but you also need a big enough reputation and record for people to not just consider you an upstart that needs to be crushed."

I paused. Even with roughly four times the brain mass+ as a normal human at the moment, it still felt like I had to take an eternity to figure out the right words to say, and even then, they always seemed to come out wrong.

"One of the things he mentioned was that fear was a double-edged blade," I said, "And that...it could take civilized people and turn them into rabid dogs if you weren't careful."

"And I…" I allowed myself a contrite wince, one I genuinely felt, "...haven't exactly been careful, have I?"

"No." Dad took a sip from his mug, "No you have not."

The both of me looked at our feet in shame. Over the night it had dawned on me how close I'd come to absolute disaster. If Dad hadn't stopped me when he did, I'd still be doing this, and in a few weeks, I could have been dead.

I wasn't really sure what to say next.

Dad looked at young me with a curious look for a second, "Hey, can she stay when you head out?"

"That's not how my power works, Dad," I sighed in the older version of me. I had the younger me palm her/my face.

"Once I leave her range," Younger me gestured with a free hand to the older me, "I turn back into inert goo."

To accentuate my point, I had the smaller me's hand melt into said goo. A transparent mass of inert me fell onto the floor. It wasn't 100% accurate since it was still in my range, and as such still me, but given the way Dad nodded, I'm assuming he got the point.

"Still haven't found a workaround for that," Older me admitted as I had the younger me hop down from the dresser and dip her/my stump in the goo. On contact I had the cells in the pile reorganize back into the structures they'd just been. In seconds, she/I had a hand again.

The whole time, Older me continued unhindered. It was only the managing of cells, after all. "It's kind of frustrating. I mean, I could do so many things if I could just exist outside of my range."

"Can't you just...cut it off? Make it not you?" Dad offered, "I mean, if you could do that, you could do amazing work healing people."

I waved the idea off, "Not how it works. Cutting off a piece of me and making it not me would be like you deciding that your hand isn't you anymore."

"You can't just will a part of you to stop being you," I explained with younger me as I had her flop belly first on the bed, "And even if you did cut it off physically, it'd just lay there and die, not be its own thing. That's kind of what happens when I leave my range."

"And anything made of cells or biomass is me," Older me continued, "I can't make biological materials that aren't me."

"Hmm," Dad sipped his coffee again, "And I suppose it would be pretty bad to give someone a new heart, only for it to melt into goo on them if they get too far from you."

"Yeah, and my range is pretty shit," Older me grumbled, "I've got nothing on Mom's range."

"But, if I remember correctly, you can go wake your sister up before it gets too late and she gets mad at both of us for letting her sleep the morning away," Dad suggested. "And all while you stick around to talk to your dear old dad."

I had older me tsk and scowl in a way that felt appropriate. Younger me, however, was free to whine pitifully asI embraced my inner child.

Still, I complied.

Dad smiled at the leaving me and pointed out, "This way you can keep your sister occupied so she doesn't listen."

I had to admit, that was a good reason. God only knows when she's _actually_ wake up, but if Murphy had anything to say about it it would be at exactly the wrong moment.

"So, back to the List," Dad turned back to the me still in the room. "You went through it?"

"Yeah," I said. I moved to put the notebook on the desk to show him, but then realized that I wasn't currently tall enough to see over it that well.

I cursed my short-sightedness.

Dad snickered, "Problems,"

"Shut up," I mumbled under my breath, moving to the bed instead.

"Ok," I began, unfolding the notebook. Folded up inside the first page and tucked between it and the cover was the list. I took it out and unfolded into a long sheet of paper. "This list has a lot of rules...especially weird ones."

I gave him a bemused look, " Like, 'Don't eat yourself. What's up with that?"

"Oh…" Dad's eyes gained a faraway look as he recalled some distant memory. "That…"

"Yes...that…" I repeated with eager eyes.

"Well," He pursed his lips, "Like many of these rules, the story starts with 'one day your mom was bored and had an idea.'"

"What kind of idea?"

He gave me a kind of exaggerated shrug, "She wanted to know what it would feel like to eat one of the bugs she was focusing on."

"Wait, how's that eating herself?"

"Because she can feel everything the bug feels. So she could feel herself eating another instance of herself."

My eyes widened. My jaw went slack.

"I should do tha-"

"No," He cut me off sharply with a finger

"But Dad, hear me out," I held up my hands.

"Amy, _no_ ,"

"I could make myself taste like _anything_. Like beef, or frogs, or" I gasped as a new thought struck my mind, "I could make myself taste like something new! I-I could experiment! I could be a chef! I-"

I flinched as something wet with a sharp and familiar smell of honey hit my face. I looked up to see dad with mom's little bottle of perfume and half annoyed, half amused, look on his face. "No! bad Amy. I stopped your mom before she swallowed a live cockroach 'for science', I'm not going through this whole thing again."

I...could see his point.

"Sorry?"

"Mhm," He gave me a skeptical look, but put the bottle back in his pocket.

"Are you just gonna carry that around all the time?" I asked.

"It pays to be prepared," he pointed out with a shrug.

"I guess…" I frowned.

"So, what did you get as the theme from the rules?" Dad said, changing topics with a deep breath.

"Don't escalate." I said, "Didn't I say that earlier?"

"And I said you were wrong."

"Right, yeah…"

"So…?"

"Umm…" I looked at the long list of rules, restrictions, and exceptions. I tried to think about everything I knew. Then I remembered the journal I'd just been reading from my father.

"It's about being a better person?" I said in a questioning voice.

"This isn't Jeopardy," He quipped with another sip, "Please, do not phrase your answers in the form of a question."

I rolled my eyes, but restructured my explanation.

"Ok, so parahumans, as a rule, tend to be more...chaotic, than your average person." I began, "But not inhumanly so. They just tend to be the types more likely to act on their desires."

Dad rocked his from side to side, rolling the thought around in his head like liquor in his mouth to judge the depths of its flavors. "Not how I'd put it, but I can see what you're saying."

"And having a proper code of conduct in place is important, because without it there's nothing holding you back. There's nothing keeping you human." I explained, "Without rules, we're just animals, wild beasts with no honor. Having rules by which we conduct ourselves keeps civilization alive, and without them, we are no better than those we fight against."

"If I go out and fight without constraint, without law or honor, only to hurt those who offend me, that makes me no better than the Nine."

"Well," Dad took another sip, "Technically the Nine have rules. Or, at least, they did when they swung by here."

He pinched his face in consideration, "Though, I suppose they were less stringent rules for how to conduct themselves, and more like rules for a game so it would actually be fun."

"Regardless," he waved it off, "I think I get what you're saying."

I breathed a sigh of relief. I really wasn't great at communication in general, speeches, essay, all of it. I prefer doing over saying any day.

"Still, another thing to consider is The Show." He pointed out.

I frowned, "The what?"

"The Show," he said, placing his mug on a terrarium with a clack. The tarantula inside flinched, rearing up at dad, but he didn't so much as blink at the dinner plate sized spider. "It's a term used to describe the, uh, …'pizzazz' of being a cape. I mean, you think your mom put on a silk bodysuit for fun?"

"Well...yeah?" I shrugged helplessly.

Dad just sighed, slouching in defeat.

I snorted.

He shot me a look and straightened up. "Still, the Show is, essentially, cape culture as a whole. Heroes, Villains, all of its a performance."

My face scrunched up in confusion, "Uh...I think all the victims have something to say about that."

"Yeah," He shrugged, "That's the Job. The actual things they do. The Show is the performance the capes put on to play to an audience. Gangs and police have existed for a long time, as have notorious and famous people on both sides, but it's only recently from the emergence of parahumans that Heroes and Villains have happened outside of a comic book."

"Do you know why?"

I think my father had mentioned something about that.

"...so people don't freak out?" I ventured.

"So people don't freak out," he repeated with a nod and a sip from his cup.

"You see, a person is smart, but people on the whole are dumb panicky animals. You give some people powers that defy nature as we knew it, and everyone will freak out. Now you've got dumb panicky animals with superpowers, and dumb panicky animals with guns."

"Wait, but can't parahumans use guns too?" I questioned.

"You gonna let me finish?" Dad raised a challenging brow.

I groaned loudly, letting my inner child out again. "Fine."

"Right, so, the Show is all about being flashy and making people forget that each cape is a human with a laundry list of chips on their shoulder and have at least on fundamental aspect of themselves that is better than any human could hope to be. Get the right trigger, and you get a walking WMD with a grudge like Nilbog or Archon."

"But people don't think about that, they think about the icons. The Heroes and Villains. They think about the Show."

"Honestly," He shrugged, "We're lucky that parahumans aren't being rounded up in camps or cutting the nation up into their own little fiefdoms like Africa."

I allowed myself to wince at the metaphors.

Dad looked sheepish, "Ah, right, sorry."

"No, no, you made your point." I sighed. "And I'm guessing my 'Show' wasn't exactly convincing people that I don't need to be put in a camp?"

He gave me another strained smile, "No, no it was not."

"Ugh," I groaned, flopping back on my bed. "How the hell did Mom get away with that? How did Father?"

"Well," Dad said, the bed creaking ever so slightly as he sat down beside me, "Technically he didn't. He did a lot better than he could, and possibly should have, given his propensity for turning people into bone trees, but there's a reason he's not with us today."

"And Mom?"

"Annette died the way she lived, saving people without any regard for hew own life," Dad shrugged, "Part of me wants to punch in the face for dying like that, but hell if I could do anything to stop her."

A pit opened in my stomach as a lump the size of a mountain found its way into my throat. An enormous wave of guilt hit me, and I had to look away from Dad. I felt ashamed, like a coward, but I couldn't look him in the face.

He shook his head, "That's in the past now."

"Let's see what you came up with while I was asleep," he said, trying to switch topics, if a bit inelegantly. I wasn't really sure what to say to him about that, not with my own feelings on the matter. So instead I just handed the notebook I'd written in to him silently and laid back on my bed.

At the same time, in another part of the house, the Older me was walking up to my little sister's room as I tried to bury the guilt and depressed feelings as far down as I could shove them. I'd gotten some buttered toast, apple slices, and milk from downstairs since she was always hungry when she got up.

I stopped in front of her door, waiting for a moment as I strained to hear inside. Her heat and breath rates were slow and steady. I could hear her doing that little oh so cute snoring of hers when she slept soundly.

I opened the door, and there she was. Laying in under her covers on her belly, like a bug under a rug. One arm outstretched, fingers brushing against the crumpled pages of her book, the other crooked against her titled head.

I walked over to her bedside, gently placing the breakfast on the table to not wake her. Part of me wanted to scream in her ear, to do something suddenly to jolt her awake.

But I didn't.

She was so peaceful. Not crying, not panicking, not rambling, not manic. Just...sleeping. Just at peace. I carefully sat down on the bed without so much as a creak, shifting biomass inside me to balance everything out. I reached out and picked up her book.

 _Taylor would throw a fit if she saw what she'd done to this book_ I thought with a small smile I allowed myself to have. A few of the pages were crinkled by her tired hand smushing them together. _But she doesn't need to know._

I smoothed the pages out with a gentle grin and closed the book, putting it on her nightstand so she'd think that she'd put it away. I even slid a bookmark into the last page she'd been on.

Turning back to my sister, I just took a moment to enjoy the serenity. I loved Taylor to bits, but normally she was a whirlwind of activity and emotion. It was so sweet but so draining. Like this, however, I could enjoy a quiet moment with my sister. Just being here with her, cherishing time together, it made that pit of guilt and pain ebb away. I don't know if it was really healing, or just smothering the pain in something else, but it helped.

I moved around carefully, in some places letting the cells of my body flow and become more like a liquid, all so I could place her head in my lap without waking her. As I moved her, she mumbled something under her breath and shifted around into a more comfortable position. I stifled a giggle at the sight.

I didn't know what it was, since I didn't normally go for what most people considered cute, but something about my little sister made me just want to squeal and hug her until the sun died. I settled for humming a tune as I stroked the beautiful midnight locks she'd gotten from Mom, patiently waiting for her to wake peacefully.

I'd done it before, and I knew it worked. She'd wake up slowly, but happily. No stuttering heartbeat or panicked brainwaves. She'd be at peace, just like she was meant to be.

As I touched her hair and scalp, I could sense her entire cellular structure again. Her DNA wound and unwound itself in my mind's eye. Her entire physiology like an open book before me.

No new viruses or infections. No new injuries. No signs of nightmares in her brain. The potential for mild soreness in the arm she slept on, but nothing significant. She'd probably want to go to the bathroom when she got up, though. And to round out the checkup, I took a very close look at her brain.

And breathed a sigh of relief.

 _Still only a Corona._

Dad, in my room, looked at the younger me with a strange expression.

"What's up?" he asked. From his perspective, I just suddenly seemed happy out of nowhere.

"Taylor still hasn't triggered," Younger me smiled up at him, "I'd been worried that maybe all the stress from Emma might have gotten to her, but she's still got just the Corona Pollentia."

He frowned, "Corona Pollentia...that's the brain thing that gives parahumans their powers, right?"

I nodded, letting the feeling of contentment from snuggling with my adorable little sister wash over all forms of me, "Yeah, people who can trigger have just the Corona, people who have triggered have a Corona and a Gemma."

"Dunno the specifics of it," I shrugged on my bed, "haven't been doing a scan while someone triggers. No idea how it works, really."

"Don't you get a nice blueprint of everything?" He questioned.

"Most everything," I answered, "The Gemma is a...weird spot. Everything else, I can figure out by watching it work or reading a textbook. Those two anomalies? Fucked if I know" I shrugged, "They don't exactly follow the laws of physics, and most of the time I can't make heads or tails of 'em."

"You can't do anything with it?"

"I think I can, but it kinda feels like poking your eyeball," I explained.

Dad gave me a puzzled look.

"It's not a great metaphor, but it's the best I got," I shrugged, "Sure, I can technically do it, but I _really_ don't want to, and I have a very bad feeling that nothing good would come of it. Kinda like if a normal human tried to, say, dig out their own eyeball and eat it."

"I...guess that's one way to put it," He said with a raised brow as he stared at me.

I shrugged again, "I don't know what to tell you,"

"You could tell me why half this stuff includes being an edgelord." He asked.

" _Dad_ ," I groaned.

"What?" He shrugged, "Taylor told me what that means. She says you're turning into one."

He glanced back at the notebook I'd given him. "...I'm starting to agree with her."

"It's not that bad, right?" I ventured.

"Most of this is about being as scary as possible to the criminal populace, without being labeled a psycho. Or being caught." He gave me a look with a raised brow, one loaded with questions. "One of them is called, 'The Thing'."

I winced.

"Another, 'the blob'."

I cringed.

"Can't forget, 'Blade Worm'. Or 'Night Slayer'."

"Ok ok, ok," I groaned.

"Oh, wait, I'm just getting to the best," He ignored me, looking at the notebook intently. He jammed his finger at a specific line in on the page. " **The Infestation** "

He shot me a look with both brows raised to his hairline, "the _Infestation_? _Really_?"

The sheer embarrassment borne from the look caused my face to heat up, regardless of my ability to suppress it. Saying it out loud made it sound so incredibly stupid. I just wanted to melt into the floor.

So I did.

* * *

 _A/n: Sorry for the delay._

 _To be honest, I'm still not completely happy with this chapter. I feel like I do a lot of talking around the point, but I'm not actually getting to it, nor am I advancing time properly._

 _Even worse, this was originally much longer, but I cut the chapter in half when I looked up and realized I had about 7.5K. I'd rewritten this whole thing numerous times, and each time it only got longer._

 _If I had any sense, and more time, I'd just cut this whole thing out and start from scratch at a different angle. But I'm 7.5K deep and one week late, so fuck it, I'm going in._

 _If I'm lucky, then I'll actually be able to give myself some breathing room for next week, but fuck if I know if that'll work out. Normally I'd at least consider cutting that part off, but that chapter has basically everything I liked in it. Maybe I should have cut this part out? Ugh, I don't have time for regrets like those._

 _Doesn't really help that both my betas are gone so I can't get their advice on all this._

 _Whatever, I hope you guys enjoy this. See you in a week._


	8. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

* * *

"The Infestation, really?"

Dad gave me a wry smile.

In sheer shame and embarrassment, I let the younger me in my room melt into a puddle of sentient goo. I flowed off the sheets, onto the floor, and under the bed where I could let that partition of me burn in shame in peace.

Instead, I distracted myself by focusing on the instance of me in Taylor's room. My little sister let out the cutest mewling sound as she stretched out all her limbs.

I let out a small coo, unable to help myself with her adorable cat-like mannerisms, and scratched her behind the ears.

"Mmph, stop it," She swatted at my hand, eyes still closed.

"No such luck, munchkin," I grinned down at her.

Finally, her eyes opened, though only to glare up at me, "I'm not a munchkin." She pouted. "You're just freakishly tall."

Well, that was true. I'd looked at my original genome and I'd found that I actually had a disposition for being more on average with most women, or even on the shorter side. Compared to Taylor and Mom's genes, I'd have been the munchkin.

But how can Taylor be my adorable little sister if I'm the short one?

 _We just can't have that_. I smiled to myself.

Compared to everything else in my repertoire, making myself 5'11" at 16 was trivial. Given how much Taylor was likely to grow, I'd probably need to end up at least 6'2" in order to forever keep my big sister status.

I had the errant thought of letting myself get to 9ft, if only for one night, just to mess with Taylor's head, but quickly discarded it with a chuckle.

Taylor's pout deepened at the way I dismissed her claims.

"I'm sorry, Tay," I said insincerely as massaged the kink I knew she was going to have in her shoulder. "My baby sister is just so cute when she's sleep, I just couldn't help it."

Taylor turned her head away from me in defiance, a fearsome blush on her cheeks, though she made no move to get away from me.

"I'm not a baby," She grumbled under her breath.

"A girl can dream," I smiled. Part of me hoped Taylor never grew up, that she'd be a tween forever. Hell, part of me dreamed she was a kid again, free of the toils and worries of real life. I'd bare all the pain for her a thousand times if it meant she could be innocent and blissful for another year.

"I made you toast!" I said with a perky smile, switching topics as I could sense the way her mind was shifting from thinking about me babying her to thinking about how incredibly hungry she was.

Taylor's eyes flashed over to the plate on the nightstand, the scent of buttered hot bread and exposed and crispy, juicy, apples. She bit her lips, and I could see the way her mind turned through all the thoughts she'd tell herself as she tried not to think about how tempting it all was. She didn't want to give in.

I couldn't normally tell a person's thoughts so easily from scanning their body. Brains are very _very_ complicated, and even with the Repository inside me storing all the scans and memories I'd ever had, it wasn't easy to put together the way one's brain lit up with what they were actually thinking. Reading the hundred billion neurons in someone's brain at anything close to real-time and translating the tangled mess into coherent thought and words just wasn't feasible for me. From what I could tell, people barely ever even thought in words in the first place, usually, it was a disjointed series of images, concepts, and senses. Even that was born from steadily pouring over the same scans over and over again.

So instead, I usually just looked at what areas of the brain were lighting up in what patterns in response to what stimulus. It wasn't perfect, and I couldn't get details like names or specific locations, but sometimes I could get a general idea of what someone's thought process was.

For Dad and Taylor, this worked the best because I knew them. I knew the type of person they were and the way their brains worked. When I saw their brains lighting up in certain patterns, I could guess that it meant they were thinking and how they got their. I barely even needed to read Taylor's brain, especially. Unlike Dad, she didn't have a poker face carved from stone.

A large part of me felt guilty about it. I was, after all, pretty literally reading their brain. At the same time, I couldn't really not look at it if I had skin contact with them. The brain was the most active part of the human body by far. The whole body moved and worked as a unit, and it was beautiful, but only the brain was alight with such an incredible fire of activity. Ignoring it and other physiological cues while I had skin contact would be like trying to talk to someone while ignoring their facial features and tone of voice.

It was the reason why I wore so many layers all the time. It felt more...polite… to not constantly be reading people like that. Plus, I didn't really want to constantly be reading people like that, Beyond it seeming rude, it was just a hassle to know every detail about a person on a cellular level every time I bumped into them, especially considering I'd never _forget_ those details.

I was pulled from my thoughts by Taylor shifting around on my lap.

"Are you coming in with me today?" I asked, turning my thoughts back to the immediate present.

Taylor just grumbled something unintelligible. Which meant that she didn't really want to go and leave her comfy bed yet, but she also didn't want to tell me no, and she also didn't really want to sleep all day.

Which meant I'd have to poke and prod her awake.

"Come on, Taylor," I smile, poking her cheek with an apple slice. "If you don't want to sleep the day away, you need to get up and give me an answer."

She grumbled again, flipping over and burying her face in my stomach.

I tapped the wet apple slice inside of her ear.

She jerked over, slapping her hand over her ear and shooting me an offended slack-jawed look like she couldn't believe I'd done that.

I gave her my best innocent _, "Oh, whatever do you mean?",_ smile.

"You're so mean," She tried to scowl. Without her glasses, her face was framed a little differently. Her eyes appear smaller on her face and the black plastic rims no longer breaking up facial features. Up close like this, she didn't need her glasses anyways, being nearsighted.

"Call it tough love," I said, poking her with the apple slice again.

She slapped it away with a grimace, "I don't want that, it's been in my ear!"

"Just the outside," I shrugged, "And, I mean, if you can't eat yourself, what can you eat?"

Taylor curled her tongue and opened her mouth in a gagging motion, and for a moment I was tempted to snap out and poke her tongue with the apple slice. I knew that'd probably earn me a slap, and be a bit too far, so I settled for twisting around and throwing the apple slice in the trash.

"There, happy?" I said, shooting her a wry smile.

"No," She pouted, "I'm sleepy."

"Some cold water could fix that," I offered, holding up a glass.

The scowl my little sister sent me made me laugh, but I pulled it back together to ask her the question again. "So, are you coming in with me today?"

She thought about it, biting the inside of her lip as her eyes turned up and to the left in thought. I could see her brain lighting up in all the tiny arguments going on in her head. I decided to help her out.

"Well…" I drawled, "If you stay here, you can sleep in. If you come with me, I can just swing around to Emma's when we're done."

I shrugged, "It's up to you."

She moved onto chewing her bottom lip. "I…"

I could tell by the way she was tensing up and picking her words that she was trying not to hurt my feelings.

As if such a thing could ever wound me.

"I think I'll stay home." She said eventually. "I'm just still tired, a-and I need to pack, a-and-"

"Okay," I cut her off with a smile. I let her know it was all ok by brushing my hand through her hair. "It's fine, Taylor, it really is."

She relaxed, sagging onto my lap and leaning into my hand. All the tension bled out of her, and for a while, we just sat there. Her steady breathing and heartbeat a peaceful metronome for my mind. There were no words, there was no need for them. Just me and my sister at peace, as we always should be.

After seven and a half objective minutes, Taylor broke the silence.

"Feed me," Taylor finally said, opening her eyes so she could stare up at me.

"Oh?" I raised a brow, "I thought you weren't a baby?"

"I'm not," She nodded imperiously, "I'm a queen. And as my loyal servant, I command you to feed me."

I chuckled, I couldn't help myself. "I think you're more of a princess, myself."

"A princess?" Taylor pouted, pursing her lips and furrowing her brow.

"Yep," I grinned, resisting the urge to pinch and prod her cheeks. I had some weird, almost irresistible, urge to pull and stretch her adorable face. "I'm sure you can agree that Mom was the regal queen?"

I saw the series of blips in Taylor's head and the way her face twitched at the mention of Mom. All the little flickers of pain. I feel a spike of guilt at reminding her. I feel a little better when she bounces back with a nod.

"Ok," She admits, almost grudgingly seeing my point, "I'm the princess, mom was the queen."

I allow myself to snort at the fact I've actually successfully roped my sister into this. I can tell she's not completely awake yet, so she's still a little...imaginative and pliable.

"Yep," Taylor folded her arms under her blanket. "A noble and beloved princess"

"Well then," I smiled, picking up an apple slice with my free hand, "Since you are such a noble and adorable princess of our kingdom" I continued, holding it over her mouth.

"Then I shall be your Knight in shining armor."

* * *

"And here we are, Milady,"

The car jerked slightly as it came to a full stop. There was a ratcheting sound as I put it in park and looked over to my sister with a smirk upon my face.

"I have brought you to your destination on my trusty steed. Though it might not be as regal as the roya-"

Taylor slapped my shoulder, "Shut up!" She whined.

"Ah!," I gasped, recoiled in exaggerated pain, "The princess commands silence! I must swear an oath of-"

"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" She punctuated each repetition with another slap on my shoulder. Still, through it all, I could see her failing to hide her grin.

"The princess?" Repeated a voice from the back.

We turned around to see a girl with long chestnut brown hair in a simple white dress with a pleated skirt that came to her ankles. Her eyes focused on Taylor with an accusing look and a wry grin. The girl was shorter than both of us and already far curvier than mom ever was. It provided an interesting kind of contrast to the tall and slim figure of my little sister.

Of all of us, Taylor was the only one not in some kind of dress or skirt. She wore a basic light blue tee shirt and some lose cargo pants. That said, if their job to cheer Emma up worked, then I had little doubt that she'd be coerced into a dress of some kind by the end of the day.

"Oh yes," I grinned, "You see, Charlotte, on this early morn, my dearest sister and I came to the accord that she is a princess,"

I gestured my hand in Taylor's direction, "And as such, I am her Knight in Shining Armor, with one of my many duties being the delivery of her and her friends."

"I was lazy and tired," Taylor explained with a huff. "I made Amy get me food."

"Ah, of course." Charlotte nodded in understanding.

Taylor sagged in relief with a pleasant smile.

"Your Highness" Charlotte added.

Taylor's face fell into a look of tortured betrayal.

Charlotte shot me a glance. An understanding passed between us.

"Well, off you go," I said, shooing them out of the car, "The two of you have a royal appointment that I couldn't possibly allow you to be late for."

The more I fell into character the more I brought up a faux posh British accent.

"Ugh, you're so mean," Taylor groaned, opening the door and getting out.

I gripped my chest in feigned agony, "oof," I moaned, "The princess's barbs, they strike so deep! How can I endure such cutting quips?"

"Oh, Milady, how can you be so cruel to your kind and stalwart Knight?" Charlotte teased as she got out from the back seats.

Taylor slammed the door shut as she whined, "Why? Why is my life suffering?"

So caught up in said suffering, was she, that she left without her bags.

"Milady!" I called out when she was halfway up the steps to the Barne's house, still grinning from ear to ear, "You cannot forget your bag."

Taylor stopped, looked up to the sky, and huffed.

"Come now, princess Taylor, we can't forget our gifts." Charlotte giggled as she leaned against the car waiting for her, her own bookbag already slung over her shoulder. My sister turned around and marched back to the car. She yanked open the door Charlotte was standing next to and pulled out her bookbag.

"Hate you," Taylor muttered as she threw the bag over her shoulder, "Hate you both."

"Have fun Milady!" I waved as the two walked up the steps again. I could see the Barne's door open and Aunt Zoe looking down at us with a perplexed, but amused, smile, our commotion no doubt alerting her to us.

"Princess Taylor?" Zoe repeated in askance.

I snickered. Charlotte doubled over. Taylor screamed.

 _"WHY?!"_

* * *

 _Here we are._

I looked down at my phone, at the texts dad had sent me before he'd gone back to bed. Work was so physically and mentally draining for him that by the time the weekend came, he usually only felt like sleeping on Saturday. As such, him communicating through texts like this was hardly a surprise or in any way new.

 _"Amy, sorry I wasn't up to see you come back home, but while you're out, why not drive by Sanctuary on your way home? You might be grounded, but you ARE going to be working their soon, and it might give you some ideas about what you want to do going forward._

 _Night"_

I snorted. _Wordy as ever, Dad._

Still, he had a decent idea, even if it was in code. Couldn't exactly talk about cape stuff on something as insecure as a phone, especially in this day and age.

As such, here I was, standing on the sidewalk in a city square. I was in the downtown area, where there'd been a lot of urban renewal recently in the wake of the devastation that was really only now fading from people's minds.

It was a superblock, one of the few in the city, and I rather liked it. The nine normal city blocks merged together in a way forced people to actually walk and interact inside their confines, but from the outside was easily accessible by car. Normally, such a redesign would be difficult, but when half the city is leveled and burned down, you get some room to work with. In the ensuing rebuilding, a lot of superblocks had been made and sponsored by major groups already invested in the bay such as Medhall, or those looking to move in, like Ladon or Tycho.

The one I was standing in, however, was different. It had been funded by donations, fundraisers, nonprofits, government aid, and a half dozen other groups that actually felt even a half a degree of love toward Brockton Bay. Anyone who wanted to see this city thrive, happy and healthy, had chipped in at least some spare change. Given why it'd even come about in the first place, it was no surprise.

Most of the exterior was devoted to local small businesses. Mom and Pop shops that had been here in one form or another for decades, startups from people trying to make a name for themselves, and everything in between. All mixed with apartments, garages, and even a school. It was like a small scale city, combined with all the other superblocks in the area, and in the middle of it all was the jewel.

A small park, a carefully cultivated section of cherished nature, nestled in the middle of the bustling city. Trees dotted the expanse, both in clusters and alone, providing shade to all who stayed here. Near one such small grove stood a playground that looked like it'd been fashioned in the aesthetic of a treehouse. In many places looking like it was made from plants, like trees that had grown into the shape of a jungle gym and massive leaves curving into a slide.

In another corner of the small park was an area dotted with rocks positioned in such a way to create a basic soccer field, surrounded by trees to provide shade. Benches, tables, and various sculptures filled the space, all of them either made from plants or rocks, not a one fashioned with metal or plastic. At the edge between the park proper and the businesses on the outside were little open-air areas to eat and chat. Places on the pavement with a table, an umbrella, and a few chairs. Nothing fancy, but enough to be inviting whatever the day.

The place was alive, too. Families filled the park, children running around, screaming and hollering with smiles on their faces. Their parents sitting around in the shade, trading small talk, stories, and snacks. Eight kids of mixed race and gender between the ages of roughly nine and twelve ren around the soccer field, playing a simple game.

A young black girl with her hair in braids scored a goal and started cheering loudly, taunting the Hispanic kid she'd scored on. A black boy, around my age I supposed, shook his head at her as he fought a grin from his place sitting on the shaded sidelines.

At the table of an Italian restaurant sat a couple, one woman with short blonde hair wearing a light jean jacket over a red shirt and black pants sitting across from a man with short brown hair wearing a blue shirt and cargo khakis. The man had a beaming expression on his face as he held up a fork of pasta, trying to feed it to the woman, who wasn't trying very hard to push it away while unsuccessfully trying to keep a straight face.

At another table in front of a cafe sat a woman in a black light jacket, jeans, and a grey shirt with short brown hair and a scarred face that almost twisted her flat expression into a sneer. She was reading a book with a cup of what smelled like black coffee and a plate of half-eaten apple pie she was slowly working through.

Looking at it all was easy, my eyes shifting into something more similar to a falcon's, and it brought me, if not joy, a feeling of contentment. That things weren't all doom and gloom. That not every part of the city was a shithole. Brockton Bay was in a remarkably better place than it was in '80s, is one of the faster-growing cities in the US and nearly doubling its population in spite of trouble like the dock work drying up and the bay getting wrecked. For all the shit that had happened to it in recent years, the people were still here. They could still smile, still be at peace.

Mom would be proud.

Speaking of...

I came to a stop, my destination before me. Looking at it brought a bittersweet smile to my face.

 _Hey, Mom_

In front of me stood a statue of marble. No, more than a statue, it was a scene, 20 ft tall and 60 ft wide. A woman in segmented plates of smooth armor over a darker bodysuit and with a long and regal mantle hung from her shoulders. She sat upon a throne made of marble carved to look like ancient wood. In her hands, was a book, opened wide and resting on a knee. Children of all ages, ranging from an older teen in the back to a young toddler on her other knee, crowded around her, all either trying to read the book, or enraptured by the woman as she read to them. Frozen in stone were hundreds of insects such as butterflies and bumblebees flying around them all, like fairies in a whirlwind. The artist had even captured the iconic twin bugs on either shoulder, with eight legs, four wings, two large eyes, a crown of thorns, and enlarged thorax's.

Where most everything on her was a stark white marble, the eyes and crown of the full mask on her face was the iconic gold. A garden had been strategically placed on and around her and the children, a tangle of vines and roses down the cape and hair, trees, flowers, and bushes placed around the base to give shade and frame the whole scene. And in memory of her, some tinker had included a device that helped attract and pacify bugs.

Bees, butterflies, and insects of all stripes and colors all flew in and around the scene. A rainbow of color and sound filled the square from them all, but even the few hornets around were all too pacified by the device to ever dare sting a soul. You could pick up and crush a black widow in your hand, here, and it wouldn't do a thing. It made it a feeding ground for a lot of other larger predators that ate them, but considering the massive population of bugs in the city and the way Matriarch's legacy continued to cultivate them, no one was worried about their numbers.

A plaque at the base of the scene read, "The Matriarch Memorial Center of Sanctuary."

Behind it, a three story building in the middle of the park. Part glass and steel, part wood and leave, it was a marvel of economic engineering. Combined with everything else, I knew Mom would have been proud. Aunt Grace wouldn't accept anything less.

I forced a smile. It was a beautiful monument, but that didn't really take away the pain of losing her in the first place.

"I'm thinking of following in your footsteps," I said as I looked at my mother's mask. "I just...I just hope I can do you proud."

As I said it, a Hercules beetle crawling on the rendition of my mother's mask turned to look in my direction with its horn. I wanted to think that it was a sign from her, a wink from heaven.

I swallowed the lump that I'd allow to form in my throat.

"Well, I guess I'll-"

I was cut off by the sound of an explosion behind me.

I whirled around, my blood surging in both panic and fury. Time slowed to a crawl as I dumped normally unsafe levels of adrenalin into my body. My brains worked on overdrive, disposing of unnecessary biomass to grow larger and hone themselves to the work of processing my surroundings. Judging it objectively was difficult in the best of times, but like this, I could easily perceive reality ten times faster than the average human.

One of those mom and pop stores on the other side of the block, a Greek restaurant owned by a couple I'd visited several times coming by here, was on fire. Billowing flames erupted from the windows on the superblock's interior. My eyes narrowed, photoreceptors shifting and pupils narrowing as I focused on the building.

The only part of the store was on fire, but it was still in danger of getting out of control. More alarming was the two men running out of the door. Both hats, sunglasses, and a bandanna hanging around their mouth. One wore a trench coat and a cap, the other a heavier jacket and a beanie. In spite of their meager disguises, I could tell each was a young Caucasian man, in their early twenties at the latest.

At first, nothing seemed particularly special about them, other than their generally suspicious activity. Then I heard something in the distance. I strengthened my hearing by tweaking the auditory processing abilities of my brain, the structure and size of my eardrum inside my skull, as well as growing additional ear-like organs throughout my body under my dress.

From the direction of the two men, I could hear sirens, the sound of people shouting.

"They're moving into the Sanctuary Superblock!"

"Corner them! Encircle the whole block!"

"Isn't that where the captain hangs out?"

"You are resisting ar-"

The last one was cut off as the one in the trench coat spun around, facing the building they'd just come from.

"Pull back!"

Flames burst from his hands, engulfing the side of the building. Screams of pain and fear erupted from the restaurant. My nose began to pick up the scents of burning wood, scorched stone, and the oh so familiar odor of charred human flesh.

The trench coat man, the one who'd just roasted a building full of people alive, laughed at his work and elbowed his friend.

"Haha, you see that man?"

"Yeah, fresh bacon, my favorite," The other said, holding his middle finger up to the building, "Take that ya fucking pigs."

"Eh, bro, we better bolt before the pin us down." Trench Coat said.

"Pft, like those fucking normies can do anything to us," His companion boasted, but started jogging towards the other side of the superblock regardless.

"Halt!" A voice shouted from one of the adjoining building in the superblock. A handful of PRT soldiers clad in the blues and blacks of their riot gear stood in front of a shoe store. "You are under arrest for-"

He didn't get far before Trench coat lobbed a fireball at them. Most took cover behind overturned tables, but a few shouldered their PRT shields with a white boar emblazoned on its black face and hunkered down in front of the few civilians still frozen in fear. The fire washed over them, and a couple soldiers pulled out guns and started taking pot shots at the two with rubber bullets.

The one in the heavy jacket moved in front of the Trench Coat and held up his arms. The bullets stopped about a foot in front of him, a hexagonal plate of white and black appearing. It held for a fraction of a second, before pulsing. Suddenly, all the bullets were sent shooting back in the direction they'd been shot, their momentum reversed. While everyone took cover from the hail of rubber, Trench Coat turned around and lobbed a fireball at a nearby cafe instead, causing it to burst into flames. More screams, more of that pungent smell of cooked meat.

A PRT soldier, the leader possibly, shot the two a harsh glare, before directing his men to help the civilians inside the burning building.

Everyone inside the clearing, once happy and at peace, was caught off guard by the chaos suddenly brought to them. For what felt like an eternity, no one seemed to know what to do, how to react to such a thing. A few screamed, a few ran, but most just stood there.

Trench Coat laughed and threw a fireball at another building that PRT had been starting to exit. The two ran through the shops, staying in the middle of the panicked crowd to have a steady supply of human shields and victims to distract the authorities.

My blood boiled, my muscles writhed, and my breath stopped. These two animals dared intrude on this peace? They'd come here and burn this place down just to satisfy their own selfish desires? Hurt and kill innocents just so that they'd have a chance to get away?

And they'd do it _HERE_?!

I took a breath and pulled a trick I'd learned from Mom. She hadn't taught it to me directly, she...hadn't had the chance. But it was a classic from her past, something seen in nearly every video of her. Something I could actually pull of better than she ever could.

I sneered at the two capes who _**dared**_ ruin my mother's peace, and I dissolved into a swarm of butterflies.

 _I'm sure dad will understand._

* * *

 _A/n:_

 _Well, the next chapter is going alright. Still, need to tweak some stuff, but we'll see how it goes._

 _Keep in mind, this chapter was supposed to be part of the last one. it's just that they became so fucking huge I decided to split it._

 _Also, the more...cuddly bits with Taylor are brought to you by my Cat. I've never had siblings, so the best measuring stick I've got for cuddling cute things is my cat. Dunno how much that stands up with reality._

 _Anyways, the next chap should be out by next week._

 _There might also be some formatting and grammar issues. I still don't have a beta anymore, so it's just me looking this shit over repeatedly, and I don't exactly have a lot of time to fiddle. Not if I want to get content out at anything approaching a regular speed._

 _So I apologize for the lack of good polish. Hopefully it's good enough to satisfy all of you._

 _That's really all I can think of at the moment, though I will note that the next chapter should include a few more details about how AU this AU is._


	9. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

* * *

The pungent scent of charred flesh and smoke filled the air.

The crack of gunshots mixed with the panicked screams of dozens of people.

It was a mess. It was a travesty.

It was unacceptable.

I glared at them all from a million eyes hidden in the trees. I'd dispersed myself into a swarm of butterflies, though I couldn't spread them out far. They all had to stay relatively close to each other, lest I lose cohesion and dissolve. In addition, since I was a swarm of butterflies, I had to do some tricks to get the information I needed.

Butterflies didn't perceive the world the way humans did. Individually, they were practically blind compared to the average human. Everything was much less sharp, and their long-range eyesight was garbage. That said, they could see in the ultraviolet range and interpret colors humans couldn't dream of. It was beautiful to see through a butterfly's eyes with a butterfly's brain. Beautiful, but not terribly useful when it came to seeing the action happening on the complete opposite side of the superblock.

But that's only if I used them all as individuals. Each butterfly wasn't it's own separate being under my control, each insect was **me**. Just like your brain links a human's two eyes together and creates a composite image, I used the processing power of hundreds of billions of neurons to combine the raw data I got from each instance's senses. I blended and processed it all, burning through adenosine triphosphate by the millions as I performed quadrillions of calculations each second.

All to paint a picture from over 100 yards away.

The two men who dared be here ran through the crowded section of the shops bordering the park. Unfortunately, they weren't dumb enough to run into the wide open sections of it or try to cut through the trees, and were instead using the panicked shop goers filling the saturday afternoon markets as human shields against the PRT. The man in a trench coat would throw fireballs behind him, forcing the chasing PRT soldiers to hunker down in cover and protect civilians.

One soldier held up a bulkier rifle with a thicker tube and revolving chamber. He yelled out something and the weapon thumped. Time moved at a crawl to me as I saw a cylinder fly up and arc through the air, before falling towards the two capes.

The man with the bulkier jacket raised up his hands, and the grenade crashed into a field of transparent white and black hexagons in front of them. It detonated, erupting into a cloud of the PRT's containment foam. It slid off the field, which either expanded as the foam grew, or became more visible as it came into contact with something solid. The two men kept running, leaving the foam behind as another barrier for the soldiers to deal with.

I was angry at all of them. The capes for disrupting the peace in the first place. For being such violent, cruel, and self-centered savages. The PRT for allowing them to come here.

While I was like this, nothing escaped my gaze. Everything was a data point analyzed and processed millions of times in a a mere sliver of a second. For every patch of empty data I had more than enough context and processing power to fill in the blanks. With all the perspectives my swarm brought me, it gave me an almost omniscient understanding of everything happening inside my area of focus.

Still, it paled in comparison to what Mom could accomplish when she put her mind to it. She might not have the raw processing power, but she could access a vastly larger pool of data and perspectives. It was good enough for my purposes, though.

I watched as most of the PRT were forced to waste their foam grenades on the fires that Trench Coat had been starting. It was snuffing them out easily enough, and they could use it indiscriminately because it wouldn't harm anyone encased in it. But for every fire they put out, Trench Coat started three more.

Thousands of wings vibrated in anger.

I shifted, changing from the very visible butterflies into a typical housefly as I took to the air. No sooner had I rose, than did I descend to the ground. My black bodies weaved through the grass as I moved closer. Like this, there wasn't much chance of them seeing me until it was too late.

The kids that had been playing in the grove were another story.

The black girl I'd seen earlier, by the soccer field, had been hiding in a tree, peeking out from around the edge to see the cape fight with eager eyes. When she slipped on a weak limp that had snapped and fell down, Trench Coat noticed. He reacted on instinct upon seeing a human figure suddenly appear, and threw a fireball in her direction. Fortunately, he was a terrible shot, and it exploded on the tree next her instead. Unfortunately, the embers fell around her and caught on her shirt igniting it and the surrounding grass.

She screamed as the fires licked at her dark skin. I think I spotted Trench Coat wince at the sight. That didn't stop him from running away and leaving the girl to burn. I was about to do the same, to leave the girl behind in the name of revenge. The fires of rage had been stoked once again in my soul, and I felt a burning need to quench them.

Then I caught her scent. A whiff of rose kissed honey swept across my swarm with a gust of wind, and memories of Mom came to the fore. The way she'd always be out helping people, even at the expense of her own health. How she saved me when she should have saved herself.

" _Those in need are those the most deserving of our love"_ I remembered. " _Love your neighbor…"_

I thought about what Mom would want, about what God would want. I felt the eyes of her statue boring into the back of my swarm's head. Were they looking down from heaven now? Judging me?

It didn't matter if they did, I supposed. Even if no one else would ever know that I could have done something, I would.

 _Without witness_...

I turned into a cloud of dragonflies, speeding through the grove at the speed of a street car. In mere seconds, I was upon her. The flames engulfed her and the trees around her, the girl's screams sounding far too much like my sister's. I collected over her flailing form, a dense cloud of insects. Then I dissolved into a mass of goo.

I could feel myself die by the millions, but the fire was snuffed out, starved of oxygen. The girl froze, no doubt trying to come to terms with the fact that she went from being burned alive to being covered in cold liquid me, not that she knew the last part. Covering her, I got a glimpse of her biology. She would live, not too much smoke inhalation, some second degree burns over her back and arm but I'd gotten to her quickly.

She was also in shock, the kind that wasn't from dangerously low blood pressure. I could see her mind firing on all cylinders, trying to figure out what the hell was happening and what to do next. At least, I assumed that was what was going through her head, she could have been thinking about the beauty of fire. Normally, this wouldn't be too dangerous on it's own, but given the surrounding flames and toxic fumes, she didn't have time to sit around and wait.

Already, I could detect the toxins sitting in her lungs. Before I could really think about it, I acted, collecting the drops of me still clinging to her face and forcing myself down her nose, flowing down her throat and collecting in her lungs. I filled them with a clean oxygen nitrogen mixture at the same time I collected all the heavier elements that'd damage her in the long run. She started gagging, not used to having liquid fill her lungs, but I flowed out of her before she could cough more than twice.

She was still coming to terms with her situation when I felt the vibrations of what I assumed was someone calling out her name, given the way certain parts of her mind clicked in her brain each time the vibrations hit her. I couldn't tell what anyone was saying, since I didn't have any ears at the moment, but I figured someone was looking for her and she couldn't stay here.

I tried to poke her with the goo, but she didn't respond to that. I, briefly, considered turning back into myself and telling her to run, but I _did_ have an identity to preserve, even if I was doing a shit job at everything else. I could have turned into a different human, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to do that here. I still didn't know what "Show" I wanted to portray, and Dad said that imitating the Thing probably wasn't the best idea. So I took a page from mom's book.

" _ **Are you okay?"**_ I said through millions of coordinated vibrations.

I'd pulled all my goo back and shaped it into the form of more insects. The ones on the girl were small, mostly just fleas, but the ones in the grass were large enough to make sound. Sound I organized and pooled together to replicate human speech.

Mom's classic Swarm Voice.

The girl shook, her mind stuttering from the new inputs.

" _ **Are you okay?"**_ I repeated. I had a beetle instance of me land on her arm and nip the unblemished skin on it.

She yelped, the fresh source of pain jolting her back into the real world.

"Yeah, yeah!" She said with wide eyes.

" _ **Good"**_ I said with ten thousand voices, " _ **Then Run."**_

She blinked. "I..wha?"

" _ **RUN!"**_ I repeated with urgency, directing tendrils of myself, my swarm, to fly down the path of grove and grass that wasn't on fire.

She took the hint and sprinted away, screaming someone's name.

Determining what, exactly, she was saying difficult. Mostly because there were a lot of names that could have filled in the right blanks. I figured it was something between Brian and Brittany.

I moved the swarm of me around, getting a few thousand eyes on the two capes running away with the PRT on their tails. I also saw all the people affected by the damage they'd done. Some trapped by fire, some frozen as fire encroached. Then I looked up at my mother's statue. I knew what I wanted, I wanted to take these men down and grind them into the dirt for what they'd done.

But what would Mom want? What would God want?

That was an easy question to answer, even if I didn't like it.

 _I guess I'm following in your footsteps afterall_.

I turned back into a swarm of dragonflies, and sped towards the sound of screaming.

I spared a few hundred of the swarm of me to look back at the two capes. They were reaching the the other end of the superblock when another group of PRT troopers came out of the building in front of them. Trench coat skidded to a stop and prepped a fireball in his hand. Two of the troopers held up grenade launchers, aiming at the pair, while two more held shields at the ready and the commander in the back gave them instructions.

I heard the leader yelling about something that sounded like "airburst", and patting both the grenadiers on the shoulder as the two with riot shields stepped back.

The man in the beanie ran in front of his friend and held up his black and white field of hexagonal panes, ready to block anything coming their way.

 _Are they really going to try this again?_ I thought cynically. It was easy enough to partition off a part of my mind to worry about being jaded and cranky while most of me focused on actually helping people not die.

More than a few kids, and a couple adults, were trying to record the cape fight inside a burning forests and shops. Something I dealt with by stinging their hands holding the recording as a bee, and then having a swarm of insects whisper in their ear to run. That was usually enough to convince them to be somewhere else.

I heard the _Thump Thump_ of the two grenadiers firing rounds, saw them fly through the air, and saw shield flicker back to life ready to block the shots.

Then I saw a blinding white light and a loud pop.

I saw that my eyes and ears had been overloaded, and quickly refreshed the senses of all instances of me I'd been using to watch the carnage. The whole process took a fraction of a second for my accelerated perception, which gave me just enough time to see the two capes dazed, covering their eyes and cursing. The one in the beanie still had his hands up, but I couldn't tell if the shield was active or not. It also let me see the grenade the flew right above them

It detonated in a cloud of smoke that quickly descended on them, enveloping them in a shroud of off-white gas. Seconds later, the two capes came stumbling out of the smoke into the field, coughing and gagging, tears escaping their screwed shut eyes.

The grenadiers fired two more rounds without missing a beat. Before they impacted. Trench Coat threw up a blind wall of fire, shielding them from view. I heard a _whump whump_ of the two grenades going off behind the fire. When the flames died down, the man in the beanie had a rough sphere of hardened foam clumped around the right half of his body, encasing both legs and an arm. Trench coat, however, was making a break for it.

He ran towards a nearby cafe missing his hat and bandana, throwing the PRT off for a moment.. Gone was the arrogance, gone was his friend, all he had left was a wild look in his eye and fire in his hands. I saw him look at a mother and child huddled together with hungry eyes, and knew I had to move.

I fell away from the most recent person I'd helped recover to safety and flew to him, but I wasn't fast enough. I turned into a swarm of dragonflies and hawkmoths, zipping across the field inches above the ground, weaving through the grass.

I saw him reach out for them. The mother opened her mouth to scream. Time moved at a crawl, twenties times slower than normal.

 _I need to go faster_ I thought as parts of me saw the glowing embers of fire in his hand through the grass.

I shifted mass around, becoming dart-like insect with eight wings, all moving in biomechanical rhythm to push me through the air like a bullet. It still wasn't fast enough.

I still was yards away when I saw it. The fire flickering in the mother's horrified eyes. The young boy, too young to understand what was happening. The way the man's lips curled up, splitting apart to reveal yellow teeth.

It was all hidden when a large white table cloth was thrown over him.

" _What?"_ He said, muffled by the cloth. He stumbled back in surprise, and the cloth started to burn up from his fire.

Then it was put out when a pitcher of water was dumped on his head. The soaked cloth refused to burn in his hands. His muffled outrage was cut off when someone wrapped a black jacket around the middle of his torso and kicked the back of his legs in. He fell to the ground, banging his head on nearby table and collapsing to the ground, groaning in pain. Standing above him was the scared woman I'd seen at the cafe earlier.

She was tying up the arms of the jacket she'd wrapped around his torso, the jacket she'd been wearing earlier, revealing the gray shirt with the Brockton Bay PRT emblem of a black boar with a golden arrow in its snout on it, with the tag, "Brockton Bay Boars" under it.

"PRT," She said in a loud and articulate voice, her scarred lips giving the appearance of a sneer, "You're under arrest for disturbing the peace, assault with parahuman abilities, attempted murder, and murder."

The man struggled under her grip, screaming profanities at her. "I'll fucking kill you! You pig! You're fucking dead!"

The woman glanced at the fires tickling the bottom of the cloth, where it was drier. She finished tying her jacket in a knot and stood up. She grabbed a nearby pitcher of creamer, and dumped it on the rest of the burning cloth. The man cursed loudly, prompting the woman to kick him in the side lightly.

She looked at the mother and child still standing in the cafe, frozen in confusion and fear. The mother looked between the scared woman and the man she'd tied up. The woman rolled her eyes and pulled out a PRT badge from her pocket and showed it to the mother, causing her to instantly sag in relief.

The man thrashed on the ground more, the smell of burning cloth rising from his bundle. The scared woman moved to a nearby trash can, pulled something out, and poked the man in the back with it.

He froze.

"You feel that?" She asked.

He nodded vigorously.

"That's my gun."

It was an empty beer bottle.

"You struggle too much, and I put a hole in your gut. Take it from me, that's a bad way to go." She whispered in his ear.

"B-b-but" The man sputtered with a muffled voice. "You-"

"I can do whatever I want." She shrugged, "Who's gonna care about some random new cape on the streets who decided to tear up Matriarch Memorial? You already burned half the place down. I shoot you like this, I'll just say you were about to kill someone and I had to put you down. They won't even bother taking the time to look into it."

The man stopped, his whole body drooping. After a moment, I could hear him softly sobbing.

The scared woman stood up and grunted. She looked around and saw two sets of troopers running towards them, another two squads dealing with the man encased in foam. In the set running towards them was the man in the cap I'd seen earlier who looked to be the leader.

"Foam grenade!" She shouted with an outstretched hand at him.

The leader slowed and gave her a puzzled look, but held his rifle at a low ready. A trooper beside him, however, didn't miss a beat. They tore off a cylinder from their belt and tossed it over to the woman.

She caught it, pulled the pin, and set the fizzing device on top of the bundled up man. In a few moments he was covered in hardened foam. She looked up at the approaching trooper and said, "You're late."

The four lines of angry red skin moving vertically from chin to the crown of her head, like scars from four blades in parallel.

"I'm...sorry?" The trooper said.

Another trooper, one carrying a shield in one hand a submachine gun in another spoke up, "Sorry ma'am."

Their leader shot him a look.

"Is he the new guy?" The scarred woman asked the shield bearing one.

He nodded, "We were going on a touring patrol of the city, just to show him the ropes, when these two started making trouble." He gestured his shield at the man foamed on the ground.

The leader jerked his head at the man beside him, then the scared woman in front of him.

"Wait... _you're_ the captain?" He said, incredulously.

She gave him a humorless look halfway between a smile and a sneer. "A pleasure."

"Oh!" Suddenly, all sense of authority flew from the man's posture, "I, uh, sorry ma'am. I just, I didn't know, and, uh, still figuring this place out. Is, uh, do I call you Atlanta or Commander Pi-?"

She cut him off with a sharp chop of her hand, "Lieutenant Hale, right? Where you from, son?"

"Um, uh, Wilmington, ma'am"

"Wilmington," She nodded, "I have an...acquaintance from there. He says it's a nice little city, relatively quiet, right?"

"Yeah?"

She slapped a hand on his shoulder with a grim smile, "Then welcome to the first day of the rest of your life."

As she walked off, she said, "The rest of the week we're gonna start doing joint training exercises with the Protectorate. It's clear we need a refresher course on how to minimize collateral damage with capes."

Curiosity taking the better of me, I placed a bee on her hand. In a flash, her entire biology enfolded in my mind.

She wasn't a parahuman. I was actually mildly surprised by that, considering all the rumors about the PRT Commanders. Sure, the official PRT party line was that none of them were parahumans, but I wouldn't have put it past them to have that as mere propaganda in the face of rising fears about parahuman dominance.

That said, she had a lot of cybernetics, something that would make my stomach churn if I currently had one. The idea of putting machines inside me just felt...wrong. I'll give her a pass though, most of them were devoted to keeping her from not falling over dead. I had to admit that Ladon did good work if they could manage to keep a patchwork mess like this woman alive and healthy.

She looked like she'd been thrown into a meat grinder, spat out, patched together, then went back in screaming for seconds. Which...made sense, given who she was.

 _Still_ , I thought, looking at the areas of null space dotting her neck and spine, _I wonder what this-_

I was pulled from thinking about it when there was a shout, followed by a sharp crack.

The man with the shields, the one wearing the beanie, exploded out of the hardened foam. He scrambled to his feet and ran towards the shrove, lumps of foam still clinging to his clothes. He pumped his legs and arms as he ran as fast as possible. Most of the troopers were still slow on the uptake, but the scared woman ripped a grenade launcher from one dumbstrucker soldiers hands and fired a grenade at the man.

The cape threw up a barrier behind him and the grenade harmlessly exploded into foam a foot away from his hand, expanding into a small boulder of off-white. She fired two more shots that flew past and detonated in the air in front of him. He kept a barrier up in front of him, so they just slid off the field of hexagonal plates again. He was a few yards from the trees, almost about to start losing them inside the maze of wood, when a bee stung him in the face.

He tripped, rolling to the ground and cursing in pain. He touched his cheek, rubbing the now swelling spot. He looked around with wild eyes for the bee that dared hurt him. Instead, he heard something.

All the gunfire stopped. The screaming, the fires, the sirens, it all fell away to nothing. Not because it didn't exist, but because it was being drowned out.

Buzzing. A thunderous rumbling that shook every man woman and child in the block to their core. And orchestra of retribution echoed from every tree in the grove. A black tide descended from the branches, hundreds, thousands of bees all vibrating with furious energy.

The pacification field was very good, and very strong. But it didn't beat out the extraordinary amount of attack pheromones I'd tagged the man with, nor the sub-audible counter-wave of sound I was emitting to eliminate the dull hum of the Pacification field.

The bees swarmed the man, attacking every inch they could find. He curled into a ball, and they all started stinging his exposed hands, his ears, every scrap of bare skin. His screams were drowned out by the droning of the swarm. His figure was obscured from view, hidden by the swirling black mass of shifting figures, all taking their pound of flesh.

The scared woman approached, slowly, with her grenade launcher in a low ready. As she moved closer to the man, I stopped emitting the counter field and replaced the attack pheromones with calming ones. The swarm of bees peeled off, dispersing back into the forest, leaving a sobbing wreck of a man alone with the Captain.

She looked at him, then turned to the bee on her hand. She gave me a suspicious look, and I flew off before she could do anything rash. She continued eyeing me until I was a speck in the distance, and turned back to the cape in the fetal position.

"Get this man a medic. I want to make sure he's not gonna die on me." She said to the rest of the troopers following behind her.

She huffed, handing her rifle back to the trooper she'd taken it from, and placing her hands on her hips.

"Just one day," She muttered, "Just one fucking day off is all I ask."

* * *

I closed the door behind me carefully, making sure it didn't so much as click. I strained my ears, listening for any hint of dad being awake.

I heard his heartbeat in his room, slow and calm. He was asleep.

I let out a breath of relief and walked into the living room. I didn't really need his cutting wit commenting about my activities today. If I was lucky, I could time the rest of my travels today with him being awake so I never got to see him. Heck, I could go to sleep myself. I didn't _need_ sleep, but it was a nice enough thing to experience from time to time.

It might even help processing me feelings about today. I'd actually saved people. I'd also gotten revenge. It felt...good to get revenge.

 _Whoever said revenge feels hollow is a damned liar_ , I thought as I flopped on the couch, _Because that felt great._

Watching the man writhe in agony, hearing both of them crumble into crying forms had been music to my ears. The man who'd been burning people alive got off light, in my opinion, but getting to tear down his companion myself made up for it. Part of me realized that it likely wasn't a _healthy_ opinion, but denying that I felt it wouldn't help anyone.

I'd also saved people. That felt...nice. I felt better about that side of things. It was like eating ice cream as opposed to an apple. Both were good, and while the ice cream tasted much better than the apple, I actually felt like a better person for having eaten the apple.

Or, well, the old human me would, anyways. These days I liked apples more, mostly because I could assimilate the still-living cells.

And then I saw the piece of paper taped to the TV.

I picked it up and groaned.

" _Dear Amy_

 _Not even one day_

 _Wow"_

"Dammit Dad," I muttered.

I glanced at the pantry.

"I need whiskey for this."

* * *

 _A/n: Merry chirstmas from me to you._

 _Hope you enjoy this chapter. No promises on a Christmas special._

 _This chapter is also the point of no return for the more major AU aspects of this fic. Before I could have explained away stuff with more minor changes, but I'm officially going in balls deep._

 _Ain't no coming back from that._

 _Hopefully it's all up to snuff. I'm certainly having fun writing the AU, I just hope you guys will enjoy it and everything pays off the way I want it to._

 _Anyways, happy holidays and what have you, I'm tired so I'm going to bed._


	10. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

* * *

"Why are we here again?"

 _I wonder how often Mom felt like this?_ I thought, looking down at my sister. A grin remained on my face despite my own internal feelings.

"Because, Taylor," I said, careful not to show an ounce of my annoyance. And what was my mere annoyance in the face of an event such as this? "You keep saying that I suck at making friends."

I smirked, letting the smug feeling of victory radiate off me. "So I wanted you to meet them."

Taylor bit her lip and looked away, nervousness written as plain as day across her body language. "They're not, like…" She trailed off, losing the nerve to finish.

"Druggies?" I ventured with a raised brow.

"No!" Taylor snapped with a fierce blush. Which just meant that it had actually been one of the things she'd been considering. "I just, ah, think it's a bit creepy in here, and you like dark stuff, so I thought maybe…"

I frowned, really quite confused as to where she was going with this. "Maybe…?"

"It was a cult?" she squeaked.

It took a minute for my brain to catch up there. Even with all the processing power I could throw at stuff the guess was so out of left field that it took a while for me to just figure out what the hell she'd said and how in god's name it actually fucking fit.

"You think I'm in a cult?" I turned to her, bewildered, insulted, and more than a little amused. "Really?"

"Yes?" She said in a voice that was all questions and no confidence.

I rolled my eyes and kept walking.

"Well, you can't blame me!" She shouted at my back.

"Sure I can."

"But it's super creepy in here!"

It wasn't that bad.

Sure, we were in a long poorly lit hallway underground near a lot of the school's guts and machinery which produced a lot of weird sounds that were hard to quickly identify the source of. Yes, there were a lot of nooks, crannies, exposed pipes, and crawlways in this section, and that did let a lot of critters like mice, rats, and spiders skitter around and do their thing in the dark depths of Arcadia high. And, okay, they had found that one dead guy here, but it'd just been a maintenance person who'd had a heart attack. The fact that it'd taken them nearly a week to realize he was missing and for some random student to find him and post pictures of his half-eaten bloated corpse covered in rodents and bugs all over the internet didn't change the fact that he was old, in poor health, and died of natural causes.

And none of that meant that anyone should reasonably find this at all creepy. In fact, it was kind of cool, really. Seeing the little microcosm of subterranean urban life. As it most certainly wasn't haunted.

...Probably.

"You're being ridiculous, I said flippantly, with a smile on my face.

"Oh come on, you believe in God and all that. You're telling me you don't believe in ghosts?" Taylor argued, jogging after me as I walked towards the lit door at the end of the hallway.

"Taylor," I said, carefully bringing all my patience to the fore, "Contrary to popular belief, just because I'm religious does _not_ mean I'm superstitious."

"Yeah, but isn't there a holy ghost?"

"Holy _Spirit_ ," I corrected, "And that shit's complicated."

"Language."

I glared at her.

She stuck her tongue out.

I flicked her in the forehead.

"Ow!" She flinched, giving me an over exaggerated pout. "You're so mean to your little sister!"

It actually made me smirk. "You say that now, but soon you'll be singing my praises."

"I just know you'll be perfect for this," I muttered to myself with a chuckle as we approached the door at the end of the hall.

It had a faded label on it, and most people didn't even know this room existed. The principal and management, of course, knew, as did maintenance, but other than that the only people who knew and used it were those in the know.

"Way to not sound like a cultist, there, Amy," Taylor grumbled.

"Just you wait." I grinned, unwilling to contain my exuberance. "You're gonna love it."

"Love _what?_ "

I giggled as I opened the door. " _This_ "

On the other side was a large room, an artifact of the old New England architecture that the school was built on we liked to call it the Dungeon, though the official name was far less glamorous. Long ago, the wood and stone held everything from salted meat to fruit preserves to wine. I could still smell the ghosts of such succulent meals, enough such that I'd been pushing the group to bring some back.

Later on, in the midst of the fear and paranoia of the cold war, it'd been turned into a bomb shelter. The rooms had been expanded out, reinforced, given modern installations like climate control, filters, and even hardline connections to the outside world. It wasn't quite up to the same standards of an Endbringer Bunker, but that was understandable given the age it'd been made for.

Today, however, the room stored a large round table, twelve chairs, and five other people talking amongst themselves. On the table was a large map with a grid pattern overlaid on top, two large ornate black boxes with silver latches and golden designs, a myriad of dice of all manner of shape, size, and color, as well as an array of silver figurines ranging from a mighty dragon to a small dog.

Chad, a reed-thin Vietnamese-American man a grade above me with long black hair and a lackadaisical slouch noticed me come in and gave me a smile and a wave. I waved back, feeling the cooling rush of being back in my element. I was back in a familiar setting, a place with well known and trusted friends. In a way, it felt like coming home.

"Oh my god…" Taylor's jaw dropped at the sight of the room

I leaned back against the door frame and folded my arms over my chest to let Taylor take in the view. I let the smug feeling wash over me and fill my face with confidence.

"Can we go see the cult instead?" Taylor asked.

I stumbled off the door, barely catching myself with my enhanced reflexes. "W-what?"

Taylor gave me a flat, unimpressed, dare I say _bored_ look. I worked my jaw for a moment as I tried to think of a response.

"Dungeons and Dragons? I didn't peg you for a nerd, sis," Taylor asked with an accusing brow.

"I-I'm not a nerd!" I sputtered indignantly.

Glancing behind her I could see Chad, Jasmine, and Lucas all struggling to hold in their laughter. I shot them all glare before Taylor stole my attention again.

"I mean, I thought you were going for the whole cool broody goth rock chick kinda thing. But then you pull out D&D." Taylor sucked in through her teeth, "That's pretty nerdy."

"Says the person who keeps reading Wikipedia when they're bored."

"Hey! Wikipedia is doing good work! I happen to appreciate the incredible availability of reliable information it provides. Don't hate on it just cause you can't internet."

"Wikipedia can eat my fucking-"

I was cut off by the loud creaking of the wooden door on the opposite side of the room opening up from one of the many passages of the basement. Five more people entered through, and I caught Rob and Morgan immediately, but behind them…

"You know...I think maybe I spoke too soon…" Taylor tried to say nonchalantly. "Maybe I should give D&D a chance." She dipped her head down and averted her eyes, trying to hide her growing blush by fixing her hair.

I only noticed that in the background. I was too busy looking at the trio that had entered with wide and disbelieving eyes. The blue-haired kid, I didn't know his name, annoyed me a little. I thought his hair was kind of gaudy and his overall attitude ticked me off, but he was a teenage boy and an open cape so it didn't really surprise me.

Seeing the blonde haired and blue eyed form of Victoria Dallon was much higher on my list of "Things currently driving me to a blood rage", especially the way I could feel her aura tickling the back of my brain. This close, I was sure it was doing the same to my sister's much more malleable mind, something that set my teeth on edge. The way she looked around with wide starry eyes somehow managed to piss me off, and the way everyone seemed to notice her the moment she walked in made my eyes twitch.

But the person who made my blood boil was the one in the back who deliberately tried not to meet my eyes. The normally smiling and confident ball of charisma and enthusiasm that most girls liked to call a dreamboat. Dean Stansfield.

"Oh, wow!" Vicky said with genuine excitement, which only managed to piss me off more somehow, "Dean, look at these!"

She flew over to the table and swept up two of the figurines on the table and brought them up to her face to inspect them.

A slim Hispanic boy with close-cropped hair and glasses, Hector, walked up to her and cleared his throat. Hector was the one who made the metal figurines for everyone. By hand, no less. He did it in his spare time in the machine shop his dad ran and he was pretty proud of them. They may have been durable, but he didn't appreciate people mishandling them.

"Um, if you could-?" He began, gesturing to the figurines.

"Oh!" Vicky brought a hand up to her face in shock, "I'm so sorry! They just looked so cool and intricate!" She quickly placed them all back on the table, yet did so carefully to keep from damaging them.

He gave her a nervous smile. "That's, uh, fine, but I'd appreciate it if you were more careful. I know they're made of metal, but I actually used a pretty soft and cheap one for them, so it's not too hard to get them to warp-"

Hector would have continued to ramble, I knew, but Vicky cut him off.

"You made these?" She prodded with a curious look.

"I, uh, yeah?"

"That's incredible!" She placed an encouraging hand on his shoulder and prompted him to keep talking.

And he did.

Just like that Vicky had taken one of the more introverted members of the group, someone who barely spoke more a sentence to anyone, and made him open up to her like they were old friends. He was _my_ friend, I'd worked for over a year to build a relationship with him, with all of the people in the club, and here she was, making them with the snap of her finger.

It infuriated me. Today was supposed to be special. I was going to be the veteran member of the D&D club introducing my younger sister everything in here. It would have been a great way to help her make new friends, to expand her interests, and I know she would have loved it. All the work and plans I'd had were ruined, tossed to the wind because Vicky and her cousin showed up and stole the show. Now Taylor would be more interested in ogling the boy in blue and the rest of my friends talking shop with the resident celebrity.

And the worst part, the part that really pissed me off, the part that had my bones writhing under my skin wasn't either of that. The blue kid was too clueless to really hate, he was kind of a bumbling fool. Vicky, for all that it felt like she was stealing my friends, wasn't being malicious about it. She was genuine, if saccharine sweet. Sure, it made me want to rip off her arms and watch as she cried herself to sleep, but she was relatively innocent in all this.

She was like a big dog, with her happy dumb face and the way she just seemed to absorb a room's attention. There was also the fact that she'd end up bumbling around knocking every carefully laid thing to the ground without even knowing she'd done it.

No, for all she was a bull in a china shop ruining my afternoon and stealing my friends, she wasn't doing it out of intent or malice, she was simply being _Vicky_. A person I loathed, but a force of nature. There was a far more deserving subject of my anger. The person who'd brought the little monsoon over here to ruin everything.

 _Dean_

* * *

"So?"

Dean splashed water on his face, trying to wipe away the sweat from the nerves and heat. Arcadia's basement was, outside of the dungeon room, a hot a humid place. He wiped his face off with a paper towel and looked at himself in the mirror. A few droplets of water still clung to his growing facial hair.

He was stalling for time and we both knew it.

"I'm waiting, Dean." I tapped my foot impatiently.

We were in the Dungeon's bathroom, which I'd dragged Dean in here to explain and everyone else was too busy yucking it up with the local celebrities and meeting each other to notice. Dean didn't resist, probably because for all he was an idiot at least he wasn't a coward.

He hung his head for a moment, letting the water dripping from his brown hair punctuate the silence.

"...I can explain," He said.

I gave him a grin that was all teeth. "Please do."

He sighed, then pushed off from the sink and faced me. "...This is for your own good."

"For my own good?" I challenged with an arched brow.

"Yes." He nodded, then cringed the moment I allowed my anger to boil over inside me. "Okay, it's, uh, you both need more friends."

"Well Dean," I said with a dead smile as I walked up to him with tight and jerky movements filled with angry tension. "In case you hadn't noticed, your girlfriend has a _shit ton_ , and she's currently working at stealing the few _I_ had."

"So, you know," I said, my hands itching to reach up and tear his face off. "Thanks for that."

"It's, uh, not that simple." Dean winced, "You see...Vicky's, uh, ...she doesn't have a lot of real friends."

"Oh?"

"No." He shook his head sadly. "She's got a lot fans, groupies-"

"Thralls?" I supplied innocently.

Dean scowled, "That's not fair. Or accurate."

"Hey." I shrugged. "I don't really give a shit if she's Heartbreaker 2.0 or not. As long as she stays the hell away from me and mine it's not my problem.

I let out a dark chuckle. "Well, it _wasn't_ , then you brought her here."

"Look, her Radiance-"

"Is _that_ what she calls it? My my doesn't that sound nice-"

"It's very complicated, but it's not permanent-"

"Yeah, because, you know, Pavlov conditioning and reward system reinforcement isn't permanent-"

" _And_ , it's not something she can just turn off."

"Okay." I nodded with that same empty grin stretched across my face. "That's got a simple solution, keep her the fuck away from me."

Dean sighed, folding his hands together and recollecting himself.

"Amy," He began, "I think you could be one of the few real friends Vicky will ever have."

My false smile fell.

Faster than Dean could react, faster than _any_ normal human could react, my hand snapped out. Tiny claws split open my skin for a fraction of a second, tearing open my gloves and leaving the fleshy underside of my hand exposed. I grab Dean by the bottom of his face, cupping his chin, and drinking in the data with a deep breath.

He freezes, his whole body going stiff in a silent panic. I can see his whole body lighting up with fight or flight responses. Most importantly, I can see those two little odd nuggets of inhuman meat in his brain.

"You _actually_ believe that," I exhaled.

I released my grip on his chin but left a few skin and hair samples on him. Nothing he could detect, but enough to retain physical contact with him, as far as my power was concerned. I could see the pulses coming from the strange nuggets in his brain, as well as how they impacted the rest of his thoughts. Translating what all the signals meant for someone I sort of knew, like Dean, was hard. There was no way I'd be able to get anything resembling real-time translation of his thoughts.

But his brain followed the same blueprint as most other human brains. I might not get details, but it was enough to get the basics with simple pattern recognition.

"Did you _have_ to try and rip my head off?" Dean rubbed his sore throat.

"No," I admitted with a shrug. I flashed him a toothy grin. "But it made me feel better."

Dean knew I had powers, and I knew he had powers. Given what they were it was kind of hard for the two of us to spend a year and half at the same school and _not_ notice the oddities about each other. We didn't know the exact specifics, mostly because I tended to avoid him when I could, but I knew he was an empath who was probably Gallant, and he knew I had powers that at least mimicked empathic sense.

He didn't make too big of a deal about it, all things considered, because I didn't tend to do cape stuff. Which meant I was more or less just a student who also happened to have powers. The fact he had no idea I was an autobiokinetic also probably had something to do with that. The enhanced strength I gave myself was easily disguised by the fact I actually had the muscles for them.

Dean paused. "...Has anyone ever told you that you can be kind of a bitch?"

"Oh golly gosh, I _am?_ " I gasped. "Oh, my stars and garters!"

"Why, I am coming down with the _vapors_. You have insulted my _honor_ , good sir," I reeled, fanning my face as dove more and more into the accent and character, "A lady of my _delicate_ constitution cannot endure such cutting insults to her dignified character."

Dean closed his eyes, sighed, and thought something along the lines of, _Why me?/God dammit/Just one fucking day is all I ask_

"Alright, Amy, I'm sorry," He said finally, "And I know _you know_ I mean that."

I let my lip curl up in disgust at the fact he was right.

"It's just...Vicky has never been great at making friends. Even now, all she has is a legion of yes men. She thinks it makes her happy, but…"

"But it's a hollow victory?" I guessed.

"Yeah," he said with a sad smile and a shrug, "She can get everyone on her side, but does it mean anything when you didn't earn it? I know that deep down she's always worried that the only reason people like her is because of her powers or New Wave. Hell, she's scared that the only reason her own family loves her is because she finally got her powers."

"And she puts up with you because you're immune to all that," I said guessed.

"Well," Dean said with a self-deprecating chuckle, "Yeah?"

We were both silent for a moment. What was I supposed to say to that? I decided to break the ice with a tried and true technique amongst people who could read each other like a book.

"That's fucking depressing."

Dean laughed. An earnest one this time.

"Yeah, well, welcome to the world of parahumans." He shrugged. "Irony and pain is the name of the game."

I grunted in agreement.

"Why are you telling me all this? Wouldn't Vicky, like, cut all your limbs off and burn you to ash if she found out?" I asked.

"Yeah," Dean cocked his head to one side, "But this is kind of a gamble on my part. You're the only other person I've met so far in the whole city who is even resistant to Vicky's Radiance. If she had even one more friend she could actually trust...that'd be enormous."

"Hmm." I nodded. "So, uh-"

Even before I finished, Dean's face fell. His brain already churning with what his power was telling him I was feeling.

"Why should I care?"

"Really Amy?" He sagged.

"I mean, it's a nice sob story, but it sounds like a personal problem. She's not my girlfriend and she's sure as shit not my sister, so I don't see why I should get involved in that ticking time bomb," I explained with a casual shrug.

"She needs your help, Amy. You can't just turn her away," Dean practically pleaded. I could feel the desperation radiating off of him. The moment he said it, he knew it was the wrong angle, but that didn't mean I couldn't enjoy tearing him a new one for it.

"First off." I ticked off with my fingers. "I totally can. Fuck her."

Sure, I was probably being a hypocrite, a bitch, and an asshole, but fuck him. Dean had pissed me off so I couldn't be particularly bothered to be a nice person at the moment.

"Second, she'll be fine. She's got you, and she's got all the 'friends' she could ever ask for. Plus there's that whole 'truth and justice' thing going for her. She'll be _fine._ And if she's not," I shrugged again, "that's where you step in."

"Third and finally." I rounded out. "Her pep pisses me off on a fundamental level. Despite the fantasies your prepubescent dick might dream up, I'd sooner flay Victoria alive and record the sounds of her screams to make my own mixtape of feel-good memories and lullabies than join your little harem and kiss the bitch."

Dean blinked, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.

"I-I'm not trying to make a har-" Dean cut himself off with a shake of his head, "You're trying to distract me."

I was.

"I'm trying to live my own life and not get dragged into your teenage fantasies." I pushed anyway.

"I'm not fantasizing about-"

"You are now," I cut him off.

And he was.

Probably.

It was a fairly well-educated guess given the readings I was picking up from him.

 _Ah, betrayed by your own body_. I smirked. _You poor poor teenage human male. Dealing with all those pesky hormones. So glad I got rid of mine first chance I got._

"I-I'm, uh, I" Dean stammered. I'd caught him flat-footed and he knew that _I_ knew that he was thinking about it now. "That's not the, uh, I don't-"

"So we done?" I said, spinning on my heel to leave the bathroom. "I mind my business, you mind yours?"

"No, wait!" Dean said, lunging to grab my shoulder and keep me from leaving before he convinced me.

 _Dammit_ I cursed, hoping that that'd been the end of it.

"Yes?" I said in a tone as empty as my expression.

Dean sighed, realizing that nothing he'd said had actually gotten to me and that none of this was really going how he'd wanted it to at all.

"Amy, I'm sorry I put you on the spot like this," He said. He actually meant it. Not surprising, given his nature, but nice to know. "But Vicky needs this. She'll never admit it, and she'd kill me if she knew why I really did this. She doesn't even know you have powers."

"Huh, color me impressed," I admitted.

Dean rolled his eyes at the comment, likely because he literally was coloring me impressed. I smirked at the way his mind churned in annoyance. He scowled, seeing my emotions play out in response. I let out a snort at the fact that I could piss him off just by thinking in his direction.

Finally, Dean sighed and pushed on, "Honestly, I think the two of you could be great friends."

I raised a lone, questioning, brow as I deadpanned, "She's a yammering puppy of pep and happiness I want to punt into the Plaguelands."

Dean paused. "...Isn't Taylor also kind of like a puppy?" He said, leaning back like he expected a fist to come flying towards his face.

Good, he was learning.

"Yeah," I admitted, then effortlessly spun on my heel and leaned into him, "But she's _**my**_ puppy."

He held up his hands in surrender. "Okay, okay, you win."

What Dean actually meant is that he couldn't think of a good counter yet. He'd be back, he hadn't given up, but I'd made my point. Dean was a stubborn bastard, and as foolish as he was arguably brave. He liked to meddle where he had no business just because he thought it was "The right thing to do". It was stupid, and it'd probably get him killed one of these days, but it also meant he wasn't in the habit of giving up just because someone told him to.

I should know, I've been dealing with the idiot for the past year and a half.

Already I could see the way he wanted to get that last word in.

"Just-"

 _Yep_ , I thought bitterly, not even bothering to keep the sneer off my face. _There it is_.

"Give her a chance, okay?" Dean asked. "She's not that bad, and she could really use a true friend."

"Just give Victoria a chance, Amy. Please?"

 _Oh fuck_ , my face fell, _Now he's begging._

As much as I liked kicking puppies, this felt like kicking a crying limp puppy begging for death. Which actually made me feel bad. Somehow.

"Fine," I huffed.

His face lit up.

 _Oh, there's that hate again,_ I thought, instantly wanting to turn his skull inside out.

"But-!" I growled, holding a solitary finger up to his face, "If she fucking tries anything with Taylor, then I promise nothing. _Got it?_ "

He nodded fervently, hope no doubt blooming inside him. God, he was going to be insufferable. I was already regretting this.

"Amy, thank you so much. You won't re-"

I cut him off with a finger on his lips.

"Shut it. I already am. Don't make me punch your smug fucking face." I clipped out.

He nodded silently.

I sighed, figuring this was the best I was going to get.

I walked out of the bathroom in a bad mood. I was willing to give Victoria a chance. Keyword, _A_. If she stepped out of line I'd send her crashing to the ground so fast she'd need a new pair of legs.

That was, of course, when I saw Victoria literally floating around the table with a look of concentration written clearly upon her face. I was hit by a wave of her so-called "Radiance", momentarily basking me in awe and rapture, before I washed it away with casual and practiced ease.

She hung in the air above the table, her four golden orbs rotating above the table like a ceiling fan while two more hung by her side. The four orbiting above the table each shone a beam of light, much like a spotlight. I knew for a fact that those same beams could be focused into narrow lances capable of melting through steel like a hot knife through butter, a fact that made their presence near my sister unnerving for me.

Taylor, much like the rest of my friends in the D&D club, was looking at the beams with enraptured surprise. How much of that was because of Victoria's "Radiance" and how much was because it was genuinely amazing to them I wasn't sure, but even I could admit that the light show she was displaying was reasonably impressive. The beams of light she cast upon the table interacted with each other, the orbs twisting and extruding into different shapes, mostly just ovals and needles, all to create an effect something like an inverse shadow puppet. Instead of being darkness cast in light, it was light cast in darkness, all taking different effects and shapes.

And, grudgingly, I had to admit it was pretty good. The myriad of shapes and characters she made on the table in the dark was far more varied than any normal person could make with mere hands and actually started to look somewhat holographic.

"Wow," Jasmine said, a senior classman with straight shoulder-length brown hair and a plain face. She or Rob were usually the DM's for the group, as the two had been playing D&D for the longest. "That could actually really help with stories and stuff."

"We've got our own little movie maker." Rob smirked, possibilities dancing in his eyes.

"Yeah, combined with Amelia's voice acting and Hector's model's, we got all our bases covered on that." Jasmine agreed, nodding in my direction.

I suppressed the urge to scowl easily, instead defaulting to a flat expression that gave no hint at my true distaste. When I told Dean I would give this a shot I hadn't expected or wanted anyone else to try to push us together.

Then, of course, Victoria looked down at me with that megawatt smile filled with innocence and sunshine, her "Radiance" flaring up even brighter. The intensity of it gave me what I can best describe in human terms as a headache even while reset my own brain back to normal. For all that her aura screamed "LOVE ME", my own instincts screamed, "GO FUCK YOURSELF" in return.

I saw the way she'd wormed her way into all my friend's hearts in mere moments. I saw the way Taylor and Victoria's cousin made a miserable attempt to both flirt and act nonchalant around each other. I saw the way the carefully laid plans I'd made, the ideas I'd had, all burned to ash and scattered in the wind. I saw it all and felt a new kind of hate burn it's way into my heart.

I glared at Victoria's form as I used every ounce of my self-restraint to keep from jumping up there and assimilating her from the inside out. This was by no means the time or place. One way or another, however, I swore to myself.

 _I will have my revenge._

* * *

 _A/n: I've got mixed feelings about this chapter._

 _Mostly positive. I've wanted to do this chapter for a while, though originally Amy was going to be in the drama club. I switched it to D &D since I actually know a thing or two about D&D. _

_It also sets up the relationship between Amy and Victoria, as well as the two circles they live in. Amy and Vicky's relationship will have a large role in the story. I want to make it clear, however, that by relationship I do_ **_not_** _mean dating, romance, or anything of that sort. I simply mean how the two interact and relate to each other. This includes the possibility of the two hating and eventually killing each other in a spite-filled final battle._

 _Also, I've had two people go over this, including Trav, and they've both said it's great._

 _Which is were my mixed feelings come from. I feel like there's something...off about. I can't put my finger on what, exactly, feels wrong, and everyone else is telling me it's great, so I'm just going ahead and posting it._

 _I'm sure I'll learn what I missed very soon._

 _Also I've got, like, 90% of a PRT interlude written up that I hope to post soon as well as a, uh, omake? I suppose? It's a short little thing I made for shits and giggles that's about done. I've also got the Valentine's day chap lined up for whenever._

 _That's about all I got today. See you soon._


	11. Interlude 1: PRT

Interlude 1:PRT

 _A/n: Warning-Significant AU details ahead. If you are not interested in an AU that changes more two or three events, then beware. All AU changes stem from a singular Nail or "Butterfly" at the crux of the AU, but the changes resulting from are extensive._

 _You've been warned._

Commander Emily Piggot hated her chair.

She didn't hate her chair because it was uncomfortable, quite the contrary. As she let her body fall into it, she could feel it shift and adjust to her height, weight, and overall body shape. Everything to become as ergonomic, comfortable, and supportive as possible. It was fantastic work; Emily knew from experience she could get a full night's sleep in one of these things and feel completely rejuvenated, or that she could sit in a six hour meeting and get up feeling better then she did when she started it.

 _Like this damned table,_ Piggot thought, glaring at her reflection in the glossy black surface.

Looking back at her was a woman the middle of her life, and could probably have been considered "beautiful" by some men, a couple decades ago, if they'd had a few beers too many. Now she had her fair share of wrinkles, and four very unfair lines of scarred flesh cutting down the left side of her face. One of them went right through her left eyelid, another twisting her lips into half an angry sneer. Piggot had never been a particularly vain woman, but she'd happened to be somewhat attached to her face.

At least she'd killed the bastard that did it.

Still, that'd been a long time ago. While she couldn't say she'd really gotten over it, or that she ever would, she'd adjusted. Piggot accepted the woman she had become.

The table, however, pissed her off. A glossy black hexagon stretched out until it was at least twice as long as it was tall. The whole thing looked like it was made of a solid piece of some fancy high tech material Piggot couldn't identify, an odd blend of plastic, glass, and metal. It held emblems, flags, and symbols for the PRT, the Protectorate, the ENE, and the United States, all in some kind of glowing blue holographic display that looked like it was lying just beneath the surface of the table.

Said table was the centerpiece for the meeting room, and shared its aesthetic with it and much of the PRT ENE HQ itself. Lots of gloss, black, white, and blue. It helped the PRT go for that advanced law and order vibe that the people in PR seemed so concerned with. However, right now most of it was shrouded in shadows. The lights were off for the meeting, meaning almost all attention was forced towards the lone bright spot in the room, the oh so pretty and advanced table and it's occupants.

Which was part of the problem. It was all too cushy, to advanced, too shiny. It all felt wrong to her, like someone had spent hundreds of thousands making sure the "feng shui" of the room boosted productivity, instead of actually solving the problems the country was faced with. Much like how PR would spent millions of taxpayer dollars making sure their precious "heroes" looked flashy and cool.

Piggot spared a glance at them for a moment. The senior heroes of the Protectorate ENE in their colorful outfits and costumes sat across from herself while the heads of the local PRT's departments and branches in their muted and monochrome suits and dresses sat opposite alongside herself. Given the somewhat chaotic nature of the city and parahumans, as well as the fact that she was the commander of all PRT troopers and was expected to lead from the field, she was the only PRT member the table still in her dark blue fatigues.

At the head of the table stood Director Holt, a man with midnight skin and close cropped white hair. Piggot had once heard his resting expression described as "an unimpressed grandpa."

She couldn't really dispute that.

Deputy Director Renick sat closest to the head beside her, while the leader of the Protectorate ENE, Miss Militia, sat opposite him. Staring across from herself, Piggot looked at Armsmaster, the second-in-command of the Protectorate.

Piggot remembered the controversy that had surrounded the previous head's retirement, and determining who got promoted. Armsmaster was favored for a while, but certain actions Miss Militia had taken during the Nilbog campaign had distinguished her enough to earn her the promotion, especially in light of the changing role the PRT was being forced to take in the modern landscape. It helped that Miss Militia being given command left Armsmaster free to spend more time for tinkering and research instead of managing people and paperwork, both things he seemed far less invested in. That didn't stop Armsmaster from occasionally grumbling about it, but Piggot was glad that it was enough to satisfy his classic parahuman ego and get him to cooperate.

Truth be told, Piggot actually thought both Miss Militia and Armsmaster were more or less on equal footing as far as leadership went. Miss Militia might be more caring and better with people, but Piggot had a certain respect for Armsmaster's ruthless drive and the way he could adapt and overcome anything when given the proper motivation. The only problem she had with it was that Armsmaster, like many parahumans, tended to have a sense that _he_ had to be the one to do everything. Piggot was certain it was a trait that would tweak her brow to the end of her days.

Fortunately, he, and the rest of the Protectorate, answered to her on the field. Being the PRT Commander, the unofficial 'cape wrangler' of the ENE, had its many perks.

"Now that we're all here, let's get started with today's meeting," said Director Holt.

A three-dimensional hologram of the entire city of Brockton Bay appeared, bathing the room in blue. It rotated slowly, allowing each person sitting at the table to view it. The hologram appeared to be emitted from the table, but she'd once heard that there were actually concealed holo-emitters placed all throughout the room

"Yesterday, Commander Piggot assisted in the apprehension of two parahumans wanted for a number of crimes revolving around their little _rampage_ that cut a swath through downtown and ended in Matriarch Memorial near Sanctuary." Then he nodded in Piggot's direction, "She successfully engaged both parahumans despite only being armed with the most basic of equipment, in addition to being caught by surprise on her day off. For this, I must offer thanks and commendations."

A round of cheers went around the room. Some hollow, others genuine. Miss Militia actually seemed happy—possibly even relieved—something that irked Piggot given their history. Armsmaster was hard to read, but if Piggot had to guess he was respectful of the accomplishment but largely indifferent. Director Holt, despite his relatively blank face, was clearly proud of her actions, as he had made clear in an earlier discussion. The only two who really seemed to resent her were Challenger and Ursa Aurora.

"Now," Holt said, raising a hand in warning. "The problems."

He pressed a finger to the table and the hologram shifted to zoom in on the section where the incident had happened. All the damage in the resulting fight with the two parahumans was illuminated in a bloody red against the otherwise calm blue.

"While the fight was relatively light, compared to fights with Lung, the Empire, and the Teeth, the fact is that in the eyes of the public, this whole fight was sloppy," Holt said, his displeasure coming through in his flat baritone. "It's entirely possible that without Commander Piggot's involvement that it could have turned into a hostage situation. That is unacceptable."

"I'm working on a new training regimen with my 2nd in command for the troopers right now, sir," Piggot answered Holt's unspoken question. "I'm hoping to coordinate a joint session with Protectorate capes, and possibly even independent heroes in the bay area. Something to help the new squads get used to high activity environments and assist the veterans in solidifying ways to deal with parahuman abilities and personalities, while also allowing the parahumans to train in dealing with hard combat."

"Good," Holt nodded. He gestured at Miss Militia and Piggot with a remote in his hand. "You two, get on it. We'll need to schedule it in line with the upcoming Analog Drill."

"Could we have it at the same time?" Armsmaster proposed. "It would be an efficient use of time and produce a more trying and productive training exercise."

"Possibly," Holt considered. He turned to a young brown-haired man, no older than his early thirties, wearing a black suit with a blue tie. "Samson, thoughts on combining the exercises?"

Samson chewed his lip for a moment. "While it seems easy enough on paper, there's usually at least one dumbass in town who considers the Analog Drill a good time to do something under the radar. If all the muscle is distracted doing a training drill, then that limits the speed and effectiveness of our response."

Samson was the head of DT, or the Digital Technologies department, which meant he was in charge of organizing the drill that effectively shut down all his operations.

"If we did it in the city it could increase response times," Hindsight Bias suggested.

The Protectorate Thinker was one of many additions that had been transferred from New York in the past five years. Wearing a hooded white cape, set of boots and gloves, along with ivory belts and straps keeping all his gear attached to his thick black bodysuit, he capped it all off with a dark full face mask with a bulky tinker tech visor.

He was only able to avoid PR's oppressive hold, of course, by having a bombastic and theatrical personality in the field that tended to overshadow his appearance as some kind of paramilitary assassin. Fortunately for all involved, he was a complete professional when it mattered.

"It would _also_ mean any collateral damage from the exercise hits the city, which we'd have to pay for," Piggot pointed out with a hard voice.

"Both in PR and expenses," Adams, the plain woman in a suit and skirt who headed of Public Relations, added. "The people wouldn't exactly welcome the government coming in and wrecking downtown just for a training exercise."

"Speaking of," she continued, folding her arms together and leaning over the table, "Sanctuary is pissed that we burned down half their forest."

"That wasn't exactly us," Challenger pointed out, "and it was only a few trees."

"Dryad doesn't see it that way, and she's pretty pissed about what happened. She might not be the head of the local Sanctuary branch, but she's got enough pull and support to paint this whole event as an enormous failure in the eyes of the public."

A number of faces frowned, and more than a few grumbled about ungrateful civilians.

"It was a failure," Piggot spoke up.

The whole room turned to her, most confused, though Director Holt seemed to know where she was heading given the way he nodded in agreement.

"Just because we caught the bad guys doesn't mean we won," Piggot clarified through gritted teeth. The fact that so many seemed to think it did, especially the capes, made her blood boil. "We're here to protect and serve. That doesn't mean 'beat up villains', that means 'keep the public safe'. If 500 people die on the way to capturing one man, that's not a victory."

"Weren't you part of the Nilbog campaign?" Ursa Aurora asked.

The bear-themed master in neon purple and black had been another transfer from New York after the Christmas Eve Massacre. She'd been understandably disgruntled, to say the least, but after 5 years she'd managed to integrate well enough with most people. Piggot was not one of those people.

"Yes," Piggot sneered, knowing her scarred mouth only enhanced the expression, "And it was the second worst failure in all of the PRT's history. Possibly in the history of the United States. If you'd _been there_ , then you'd _know that_."

Miss Militia opened her mouth to respond at the same time Hindsight Bias held up a hand to throw in his own two cents and a tan man in a black suit and turban on her side of the table spoke up. The room was on the edge of dissolving into chaos when Director Holt raised his voice.

"Let's," he began loudly, his voice once more cutting through the static, "Table that discussion for later. More importantly," he gestured to Piggot, "You mentioned in your report that you had certain suspicions regarding the way the incident yesterday was...resolved."

"I think there may have been parahuman involvement," Piggot responded, "one from a third party, not the tinker tech in the park."

"For those of us uninformed as of yet about the details, why don't you enlighten us?" Holt said, gesturing to the rest of the room. The Director had, of course, read her report already. Piggot figured Miss Militia probably had as well. This was just to bring everyone else up to speed.

"A number of the civilians we interviewed for the after-action report mentioned hearing someone telling them to run and lights guiding them out and away from the fires. One girl was even saved from burning to death by this unknown third party." Piggot paused and took in a sharp breath through her nose, "More than a few claim that… 'the bugs' saved them."

"Matriarch." Challenger whispered, a thoughtful frown in his voice.

Challenger was one of the few locals in the room. Most people had been transferred in from one place or another over the years. While Piggot, Miss Militia, and Armsmaster had been familiar with her from their time in the city, Challenger had grown up with Matriarch as a household name.

While she was alive her career had been, to put it mildly, polarizing. Some hated her, found her to be a weakening, corrupting, and even seditious influence on Brockton Bay and the United States as a whole. She certainly had her fair share of enemies in the PRT given the legitimacy she helped give to the idea of parahumans not working under the thumb of the government. By that same notion, however, she had an enormous following of supporters. In many ways, she was demonized by the country just as much as she was idolized by it.

After her death, however, it became more or less political suicide to do anything less than put her on a pedestal for her civil service and self-sacrifice.

Piggot had her own mixed feelings on the matter, and she hadn't really known the woman in person too well before she died. She seemed to be serious and passionate about her ideals, which was more than Piggot could say for most capes and politicians, but Matriarch's goals and motivations sometimes put her at odds with what Piggot thought was best for the country. Plus the woman could be too damned stubborn for her own good.

Still, Piggot supposed she could admit to herself she at least respected Matriarch, even if she didn't particularly like the woman.

All this, of course, made this whole situation all the more...uncomfortable.

"Are you suggesting that Matriarch had a hand in this?" Hindsight Bias questioned.

"That's impossible," Mr. Mir, the tan man in the turban that headed up the Intelligence branch of the ENE said, "We know for a fact she died. We recovered her body, did we not?"

"We did," The Director clarified before anyone else could cut in, "We also have confirmation from Lustrum and other verified sources that Matriarch did, in fact, die that day."

"Indeed," Mir nodded. His voice only had the barest hint of Indian accent, something Piggot believed he either left in or created on purpose. It gave his voice an exotic flavor that made him stand out as a distinct person, something aided by his turban.

Piggot wasn't sure why he did it, but she tried to stay away from cloak and dagger operations as much as she could, so she figured there was some kind of underlying spook logic to it that she just didn't get.

"So what other conclusions can we come to? This is a clear indication of something we didn't know before; we just have to put the pieces together and follow the trail to the truth." Mr. Mir continued.

"Is it possible the tinkertech that pacified the insects in the area also controlled them?" Armsmaster suggested, "Directing them to mimic actions Matriarch could or would have taken?"

"That was the initial working theory, yes," Holt answered, "But the Tinker in question says that that function is outside the design parameters for their device."

"So...what? we have a Matriarch clone?" Hindsight Bias said, leaning back in his chair. "How's that possible?"

"Or a ghost," Adamant, the ferrokinetic New Yorker grunted, "wouldn't be the first time."

"Wouldn't be the first new biotinker either," Piggot suggested.

For a moment, there was silence as they all contemplated that horrifying thought.

"...ah, shit _,_ " Challenger whispered.

Piggot raised a brow.

"Anything you care to add, Challenger?" Director Holt asked.

"Right...well...everyone knows about the New Wave?" Challenger slowly began, looking around the room, "The, uh, original team, anyways.

"Yes?" Adams said impatiently, "And?"

"Yeah, and you know how they're basically the flying textbook for second gen capes, right?" he added.

Piggot noticed the way Miss Militia's eyes suddenly widened and got a bad feeling about what was coming next.

"Yes. Their family dynamics have been the subject of more than a few case studies," Director Holt said. "What of it?"

"Right right," Challenger nodded, rolling a hand. "So, uh what if...you know…?"

"Oh no," Deputy Director Renick sighed, lowering his head into a waiting hand. "Second-gen capes."

"What about them?" Armsmaster pressed, a hint of irritation tingeing his voice.

"There were a lot of ideals that Matriarch rallied and advocated for in her day. In spite of how broad and varied they could be, they tended to revolve around a set core of themes." He explained with a weary face, "One of her favorites was that she was a proud mother."

 _Oh_ , Piggot realized.

"There was a stint in the '90s where she was visibly pregnant and she actually stopped appearing," Renick explained, "And afterward she would gush about her daughters pretty much every chance she got."

"There's a reason she was called the mother of all," Miss Militia muttered, connecting the dots herself.

"Yeah, yeah," Challenger nodded, "So, you know, what if one of her kids triggered?"

"Then we could be looking at the second coming of Matriarch," Renick huffed in exasperation, "With all the good and bad that comes with that."

Quiet filled the room again.

"Well fuck," someone voiced all their thoughts.

Piggot could already feel the headaches coming her way. The PR meetings, the sensitivity training, the flag waving. Ellisburg, as bad as it had been, was in her element. This could be political hell.

Director Holt's face shifted into a fractional frown, "Well, it won't do to make baseless assumptions."

Challenger opened his mouth but Holt cut him off with a sharp hand gesture, "We have rumors, speculation, and circumstantial evidence. We're not going to start running around like chickens with our heads cut off just because we _might_ have the daughter of one of the largest political headaches in recent memory coming into her powers."

"That being said," Holt leaned back ever so slightly, "I probably have a long and unproductive discussion with Lustrum ahead of me."

" _We_ have a long and unproductive discussion ahead of us, Director," Adams added with a strained smile of commiseration.

"Indeed," he nodded. The Director rapped one knuckle against the table, as if to punctuate the end of the topic, and pressed a button on the remote to change the display.

"On to larger matters."

The image shifted again, now showing a blue satellite image of the northeastern United States. Most of it was blue, but one section was a deep bruised purple. A grid overlaid the whole landscape, dividing the territory into sections. The Director highlighted that section and zoomed in. Piggot felt a chill go down her spine and what was left of her stomach twist itself into knots as a familiar fog that filled the field.

"Our satellites and aerial patrols have detected large movements through the miasma of the region."

Piggot saw large red clouds forming through the haze and felt dread bubbling up again. They popped in and out of existence, denoting each sighting. Though scattered and unfocused, it was undeniable that each movement invariably sent it further and further east.

"Analysts say it's likely that it is one of the larger aberrations. We don't know which kind yet—it could be an Ogre or two, it could be a Gestalt — the miasma is too thick in there to tell," the Director explained. He pressed a button and the display zoomed out. The holotable lit up with several dotted lines leading from the Plaguelands outwards, displaying projected destinations, routes, and arrival times.

"The fog's too thick to do a pinpoint airstrike on it, and we've only got a rough 5 mile radius for it. We've tried a few probing strikes but we haven't had much luck yet. We're basically striking blind."

"As such," He continued, "Brockton Bay, Boston, Philadelphia, Syracuse, Albany, Toronto, and Montreal have all been put on alert, as well as all North American Coalition forces in the region. The Plaguelands miasma ends a few miles from the nearest military outpost and several dozen miles from the nearest populated town. We should be able to get eyes on the aberration well before it gets to a populated area."

Hushed whispers fell over the whole table. More than a few frightened glances were sent Piggot's way, all of which made her grind her teeth. That so many of these people heard of her actions in the Nilbog campaign grated on her. Not specifically because she disliked the fame, though she could do without it, but because it felt like they were all ignoring the sacrifices made by everyone else who fought in that campaign. Like all the people who'd fought and died alongside her hadn't mattered, that somehow Piggot had magically solved everything by herself.

The only thing that pissed her off more was Miss Militia's worried glance.

"The good news," Director Holt spoke up, cutting through the static once again with his loud baritone, "is that the United States Second Fleet will be moving a carrier group to be stationed offshore of Brockton Bay and Boston, and another one near Philadelphia. Combined with the rest of the N.A.C. assets both here and in Canada, we'll have more than enough firepower to bury whatever comes out of that hellhole in its own lead coffin."

"That said, one of the major reasons the fleets are moving isn't because of some aberrant sighting in the Plaguelands." The Director pressed another button and the display changed again.

This time an image of the northeastern American continent came up, the Atlantic Ocean taking up the right side of the map, Canada the upper left, and the US the lower left.

"Archon has been making moves recently, and it's got the boys upstairs nervous," Holt explained. As he did, a massive red region lit up, encompassing much of the northern section of the map. "As such the N.A.C is reorganizing fleets in preparation for another attack like Bloody Valentines or the Christmas Eve Massacre."

An uncomfortable feeling a dread filled the room. As worrying as an aberration from the plaguelands was, it was old news compared to the Bloody 14th.

"In such an event, we will have immediate naval support from the carrier group offshore and military installations inland," Holt said, the map above the table highlighting the numerous fleet and military base locations in blue. "Intelligence is concerned that this may be in response to the recent efforts made by the Navy to keep up and overtake Archon in our arms race."

He clicked another button and the view shifted again to the docks of the city.

Piggot had heard that for a while the docks of the city had been neglected. The appearance of Leviathan had been the death knell for many coastal cities across the globe. After Hero killed the beast in '04, the tide had turned. Combined with the recent power vacuum in the nation's economy and the growth of the city's tech sector, it seemed like the docks of Brockton Bay couldn't grow fast enough.

It still surprised Piggot to see all the sprawling harbors, slipways, and drydocks that took up nearly a quarter of the whole city.

"The Navy has recently ordered a new set of warships, some of which are slated to be built here. These new ships are going to be packed full of the latest and greatest tech out of Ladon Industries."

"What happened to buying from the lowest bidder?" Ursa Aurora remarked.

"When there's only one bidder selling railguns and laser point defense grids, it doesn't really matter what the lowest guy's selling," Daniels, the Kentucky born manager of the ENE's purse commented in his notable drawl, "They might be expensive, but they're worth it."

"Not surprising given it's all tinkertech," Adamant all but snorted.

"Which," Director Holt cut in, "is why we need to be on high alert."

He highlighted several warehouses in the area, "Ladon is going to have to store the equipment that will be installed on the vessels in several high-security places. They plan to ship most of it to the docks just before it can be installed, but they'll still need to store it for at least a day before it can be put in place. That's a window of vulnerability that can be exploited."

"Our job," he continued, "is to make sure that none of the parahuman led gangs get anywhere _near_ them. These are highly valued objects, there's nothing on the market like Ladon tech, and I wouldn't be surprised if Lung or Kaiser would sell their own mother for a chance to get their hands on this stuff, either to sell or to use for themselves."

"Remember," Samson said, "this is _Ladon_ tech, so even if it's tinker tech it's post Kharkov Limit stuff. That means any random schmoe with the right training and equipment can maintain it."

"Equipment that is _also_ being stored in those warehouses," Armsmaster guessed, "and would also sell quite well."

"Correct," Holt nodded, "and I don't want to be the one to tell the Navy or Hero that I lost their brand new plasma railgun battery to a bunch of punks chasing after an outdated ideal we beat over half a century ago."

"I'd be more worried about Dragon," Adamant remarked over crossed arms, "girl knows how to pout."

A few people chuckled, Piggot snorted, Challenger rolled his eyes, and Armsmaster looked like he was smiling only because he thought he was "supposed" to.

"Piggot," he continued, "I'm going to need you to set up airtight patrols with Miss Militia and Mir."

Piggot, Miss Militia, and Mir all nodded in agreement.

"You'll all be working with Naval, Ladon, Polica, and a litany of other groups to make sure the site is secure. I'll be sending each of you files," Holt explained, pressing a few buttons on the table, "Moving on…"

The meeting went on for another two hours after that, nothing surprising to Piggot. While most of it mattered, it either wasn't in her wheelhouse, or she already knew it. The only real news that struck her was that Lung's other pet enforcer was back in town from her little excursion with his thinker out in the badlands.

When all was said and done, the Director called an end to the meeting. As everyone began shufflign out of the conference room and back to their departments, Piggot decided to ask one last question.

"Director," Piggot began, grabbing the dark-skinned man's attention,

"Yes, commander?" he asked, though the look in his eye said he already knew where this was going.

"Do we have any more information on the potential biotinker threat that attacked the merchants?" she asked.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Miss Militia sigh.

"Armsmaster and our forensic scientists have concluded that there was no aberrant biomatter at any of the scenes," Holt explained. "Although there are signs that unusual drugs did significantly alter their brain chemistry. Possibly tinker drugs."

"But no unusual biological samples?" Piggot pressed.

"No," Holt shook his head. "I can understand why this issue hits close to home with you, but so far the evidence we've gathered is leading us to believe that rather than some manner of infection or virus, that this was an act of smoke, drugs, and mirrors. A potent combination as old as time."

Piggot grunted at the answer, getting out of her seat along with the rest of the staff, "I have my doubts."

"You don't believe the results?" Armsmaster pressed, "I can vouch for how thorough we're being."

Piggot brushed off the concern. Armsmaster had been in the Nilbog campaign, he'd seen the same things as her, even fought beside her once. Armsmaster understood the horrors of a biotinker, of how dangerous this could be, of that Piggot had no doubt.

"No, I believe you," she said as she walked towards the door of the conference room.

"I just have a bad feeling about this."

* * *

 _A/n: I'm sorry it took so long to post this chapter, but I put in an extra 2 weeks of editing to make sure everything worked just right.  
_

 _I really like the way it turned out, and I'm glad I did it. A number of things I was doing either just weren't working or didn't actually make sense from a lore perspective upon closer inspection. I also managed to hash out a few more details for stuff I was very unclear on._

 _So it's here, and I really hope you guys like it. There's a lot of worldbuilding I'm showing here, but I didn't want to beat you over the head with it. I hope it's organic enough not to put you guys to sleep. It's funny, and kind of frustrating, but while working on this I actually thought of a hundred other ways I could have better built up the world and hinted at stuff. Things like shirts that said "never forget" and recruitment posters and such. It would have really been a nice touch and I can add them later, might even retroactively add them in earlier chapters, but at the moment I can't change what I've already done.  
_

 _I've got to thank Trav, Mondrea, and the others at Cauldron that helped out to refine this thing into what it is now._

 _After this chap I'll be adding a couple options to the vote for the 2nd interlude. After another week or whatever of looking at the results I'll call the vote.  
_

 _I'll be heading to work soon, so I probably won't be able to respond to much until I get back tonight, so I apologize ahead of time if I can't get back to you quickly._

 _Honestly, I just hope the thread isn't on fire by the time I can get back to ya'll._


	12. Interlude 2: Annette

Interlude 2: Annette

V2

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I had seen a lot in my years.

I'd seen things both gruesome and majestic, horrifying and inspiring, in my tenure as Matriarch. Things which had etched themselves deep into my soul. I had been witness to events that the English language was ill-prepared to describe. Few could boast as long and eventful a career as the Matriarch.

So why was it that I always found myself most surprised by the mundane.

"And that's why the patriarchy is an old decrepit system that is leading to the decay of the world order around us."

"Grace," I said in exasperation, shaking my hands in the air as I struggled to come to grips with the scene before me"What the actual…"

I glanced at the eight-year-old girl in the room and swiftly corrected myself, "...fudge."

"What the fudge Grace?" I repeated seamlessly, shooting Grace a glare.

My dearest friend of many years held her palms up in innocence. "What?!"

"The Patriarchy? Really?" I shot back, hand on my hip, "You've been here five minutes and you're already trying to explain 'The Patriarchy' to Amelia?"

Amelia looked between the two of us strangely.

Grace stood up to her full height, the heels of her boots just enough to edge an inch over me. Her long and straight golden locks flowed down the shoulders of a fashionable black bolero jacket. Combined with flawless skin, Mediterranean features, black pants, and a white dress shirt, she cut an impressive image of feminine command and confidence.

All of which went flying out the window when she held up her hands in surrender and, with a dismissive wave, said, "It's _fine_."

I quirked a brow. "It's fine? Really?"

" _Yes_." Grace leaned back dramatically. "Amelia's learning this stuff just fine. Aren't you my little peanut?" she said, turning back to the newest addition to my family.

I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms, letting the skepticism simply ooze off my form. Shooting Amelia a glance, I waited for her reply.

"Uh…" Amelia's face scrunched up uncomfortably. "...my father's a bad man?"

I shot Grace a look.

Grace had her hand over her mouth, doing her best to hide her "Oh no" face. Her hazel eyes met my own thoroughly unamused pair. "Okay, it sounds bad-"

"You're da...arn right it sounds bad!"

"You mean damn?" Amelia asked innocently.

I gave Grace a disbelieving and betrayed look.

"I didn't teach her that!" Grace denied emphatically.

"I'm supposed to believe that?" I questioned.

"I heard it from father a lot," Amelia supplied helpfully.

I sighed and rubbed my brow. "Why does that not surprise me...?"

 _Just another thing to add to the list_ I thought. _For all your best intentions at heart, you had no idea how to be a father, did you?_

"See, he _was_ a bad person!" Grace supplied cheerfully, " _He_ supported the patriarchy, one of it's biggest advocates even." She nodded to herself with a smug expression.

I threw a pocket dictionary at Grace that she caught with practiced ease and a smirk.

"Oi!" I barked, jabbing an imperious finger in her direction. "Stop corrupting her!"

"I'm _not_!" Grace insisted, laying an offended hand against her chest, "I'm just trying to nurture peanut here into growing into the powerful smart and strong woman she can eventually be!"

"Why do you keep calling me peanut?" Amelia asked, no doubt jumping on the only part of the conversation she could actually follow.

"Because," Grace began, squatting down to meet Amelia at eye level. "You're so cute I could just _eat you up!_ " she said, punctuating the sentence with a finger on the girl's nose.

I had to admit, I was actually impressed with the sheer fire held in the unamused glare Amelia leveled at Grace.

Grace chuckled. "Oh, you are so going to take the world by storm when you grow up."

I rolled my eyes again, fighting back the temptation to smack Grace with a rolled-up newspaper.

"Alright, that's it." I made a shooing gesture. "We've had enough indoctrination for one day."

Grace pouted. "You used to like my indoctrination."

"What does indur...inda...indoctored mean?" Amelia asked, looking up at me with those big brown eyes of hers.

Grace stood behind Amelia, flashing her own big hazel eyes in a mocking expression. They reminded me of a lot of memories she'd dragged me in to, some good, some bad, and some absolutely not appropriate for family time.

"It means, we're going to be doing grown-up discussion stuff," I told Amelia with a wide smile that was as fake as it was a desperate attempt not to laugh or cry.

Amelia returned the smile with a flat expression. "Does that mean you're going to talk about sex, murder, or tax stuff?"

I opened my mouth, heard the " _what the actual fuck_ " come from Grace's lips, and closed it. A thousand thoughts ran through my mind. More than a few revolving around fantasies involving Marquis, a spray bottle filled with sugar water, and bees.

Lots of bees.

"Tax stuff." I eventually decided, nodding seriously at Amelia.

Amelia looked down in mildly disguised disgust. "Yay…"

She started wandering around the room, looking uncomfortable and out of place. She'd only just gotten here, and she was still trying to wrap her head around the new reality she found herself in. This wasn't just a really long sleepover, it wasn't like a fun little trip to somebody's place.

I'd been doing everything I could to make her feel welcome in our family, but it always broke my heart to see her like this. To see such a bright young star so...lost.

So, I reached within myself and held out a hand.

"Amy?" I said as I pooled the energy together.

She turned to me, giving my outstretched hand a curious look.

"Watch closely, okay?"

What happened next made her eyes go wide with awe.

A lump welled up just underneath the skin of my palm. It started small, a few undulating ripples, before growing in a pulsating mass of flesh the size of a tennis ball buried within my palm. Another push and the thin skin tore open, revealing the small creature within.

It was a large eight-legged creature closely resembling an arachnid, but covered in short violet fuzz, with two large golden lenses covering their primary eyes, four smaller ones dispersed around its body in golden dots, and two pairs of wings. The moment the new queen awoke, it became a bridge, instantly connecting my mind with it, and it's mind with the hundreds of critters within its range. I could make more Spiderwasp Queens to expand the range if I wanted, but that wasn't why I'd made her.

The queen shook off some of the already evaporating gunk and crawled onto the fingers of my hand. Behind her, the flesh in my palm closed up completely, not leaving so much as a scar. All in all the process wasn't terribly painful. Creating and hatching the eggs within me felt more like relieving some internal pressure than it did tearing myself open to unleash monsters unto the world.

"Whoa," Amelia said, enraptured by the whole spectacle. She stared at the critter with such intense focus, I couldn't help but smile. "Cool…"

"I know, right?" I said, "Do you know what this is?"

Amelia pursed her lips. "Your power?"

"Yep." I nodded. "Right here is a spider wasp Queen. This one is named Mary."

I reached out with my hand, offering the spider wasp queen to the girl. Amelia looked at the bug with a mixture of fear and curiosity, glancing at me with uncertain trepidation.

"Go on, take her," I prodded Amelia, "She loves to play."

I worked through my connection to "Mary", who might as well have just been another part of my body, and made her clap two forelegs together.

Amelia nodded seriously and took the spider wasp queen into her own hands with slow, careful, and deliberate movements. As her hand came close, I simply had the spider wasp queen walk over to her hand.

Amelia stared at it for a long moment, just looking over everything about its unearthly body, enraptured by its strangeness.

Then, she grinned.

Amelia grinned a devious grin and giggled a sinister giggle.

Before I could even raise up a hand, the girl had sprinted out the doorway.

I opened my mouth and stared at the spot on the wall Amelia had just been standing in front of.

My mouth closed with a _click_.

"Smooth," Grace said from over my shoulder.

I ignored her for a moment, instead immersing myself in the local swarm to map out the house. When I was sure I was in the clear, I had a spider drop on Grace's face.

My oldest friend barely flinched.

The lights in the room flickered and I felt the telltale burst of exhaustion, I looked behind myself and saw Grace's hand enveloped in a shell of golden light, highlighting the middle finger she raised in the air.

"Ladies."

Our heads both snapped towards the newcomer to the room.

Daniel, wearing a white tee underneath an unbuttoned black shirt entered the room holding a plate with four glasses on it, each containing a variety of liquids and fruits of vibrant colors. His other hand was held out in surrender.

"Could we not? I don't want to have to patch another hole in the wall or clean up a few hundred dead bugs again."

Grace huffed, releasing the shell around her hand and folding her arms together. "That was one time, Daniel."

"One parahuman fight in this house is one too many."

"Please," I scoffed, "It wasn't a fight."

"It was barely a tiff," Grace agreed.

"A row."

"A kerfuffle."

"At _best_."

Danny stared at the two of us for a moment. Then, he shrugged.

"Okay," he said. He pointed at me. "Then _you're_ cleaning it up"

I opened my mouth.

" _By hand_ ," he added.

My jaw went slack with horror.

"And you." He pointed at Grace. "Get to pay for anything you break."

Grace glared at Daniel and slapped his hand away.

"Don't put your hand in my face again." She scowled.

"Don't put your hand in my wall," he responded blankly.

Grace stalked up to him. Her heels gave barely half an inch over him, and she milked it for all it was worth. Her head tilted back, letting her "look down" on him from over her nose. Her eyes and hair began to glow with an ever so faint golden hue, the result of a fine-tuned use of power. One hand poked Daniel right in the sternum.

"I'll put my hand wherever I please. Don't presume you can tell me where I can put my hands, you chauvinist-"

" _Gracey~_ "

Grace froze.

I snorted.

Danny, if you looked very close, might have smirked.

Suddenly, a woman came out of the kitchen and draped one slim arm around Daniel's shoulder. The other snatched a drink off the plate in his hand and took a dainty sip.

The woman's head plopped itself on Danny's other shoulder as she leaned on him. Her beautifully aristocratic and almost royal Asian features pouted at Grace. "You weren't bullying Danny again, were you?" she asked innocently.

Grace held up her strong front for a moment. "No." She frowned, averting her eyes from her partner's piercing look. "I just…"

"Cause Danny's _so_ nice _and_ kind, he's such a good _cook_ …" The woman took a long sip from her glass, closing her eyes in pleasure. "And he makes the _best_ margaritas."

Grace bit her lip, refusing to look at her as she tried to save face.

Watching my old friend fall so easily into the woman's play put a smile on my lips. After all the times she'd mocked me for settling down with Danny, watching Akane wrap Grace around her finger felt vindicating.

"N-no Akane, sweety, I was just, er, well…" Grace trailed off, her lips flapping around like a fish out of water. I tried to not outright laugh at my friend's predicament.

"Well what, hmm?" Akane pressed, fluttering her eyes with sickeningly sweet innocence. Danny's face held the same stony stoicism throughout the two's antics. Despite that, Annette could see the way his cheek twitched.

"It was just...you know…"

Akane scrunched her face up in annoyance, unsatisfied with the answer. She turned to Danny, still draped over his shoulders and nursing a drink in her free hand. "Did she bully you?"

Danny looked her in the eyes and paused to consider.

"Yes."

Akane's jaw dropped. She turned to look at Grace in horror.

"How _could_ you?"

"He's exaggerr-" Grace started.

She didn't get the chance to finish before Akane was lightly slapping the woman's arms.

"Bad Grace! Bad Bad Bad!" She chanted. "No hitting the cook!"

I looked at my husband and mouthed the words "How many?".

He looked at her, pondered the answer, rolled it around in his head, and then held up five fingers.

I winced in sympathy for Grace.

"But Akane! H-he was asking for it!" she protested.

"Well fuck you too," Danny muttered as he placed the tray of drinks on the coffee table. "See if I ever bring you guys drinks again."

"Noooooo!" Akane wailed, spinning around and falling on Danny again, all the while somehow managing not to spill a drop of her margherita.

"You simply _can't!_ Then who'll make me my margheritas?" She whined.

"I can make margaritas."

"Honey." Akane gave Grace a dull look. "You can make cold hard juice."

"Well...yeah." Grace blushed. "...What else is there?"

Akane hissed and buried her head into Danny's shoulder. Danny patted her head with one hand and took a look drink of his whiskey. "There there, Akane. Annette doesn't understand either."

"I'm not that bad." I absolutely did not pout.

I'd only caused a fire _one time_.

"Hey, I can learn!" Grace protested, "It can't be that hard if Danny figured out how to do it, right?"

Danny looked Grace in the eye, drink in one hand, her fiance in the other, and mouthed " D"

Grace sputtered indignantly, her face flush with rage, I could tell she was about five seconds away from yelling.

On the other side of the house, I could _also_ see something through my swarm that really shouldn't have surprised me. I sighed, stuffed my fingers in my ears, and muttered, "Here we go."

An instant later, Grace's tirade was cut off by a shriek echoing through the house. The shrieking continued, coming closer and closer, all the while followed by maniacal laughter. Grace paused, Akane raised a brow, and Danny rolled his eyes.

Moments later, little Taylor came running into the room and hid behind me. Chasing after her was Amelia with Mary in her hand and a wide grin on her face.

"Come on Taylor, isn't it cool?!" Amelia taunted.

"No!" Taylor shouted, ducking behind my dress.

"Taylor sweetie, what's wrong?" I said, running my fingers through my daughter's hair, trying to calm her down.

"Amy's being mean!" she cried, pointing at the older girl.

Amelia smirked. "I'm just trying to show her your cool gift. Sharing is caring, right?"

I forced myself not to roll my eyes in front of the children. I had to set a good example for the two of them, no matter how much I may have wanted to start taking shots myself.

I knelt down to get on Taylor and Amelia's level. "Now, Amelia, Taylor doesn't like it. It's wrong to try and antagonize someone with something they don't like. That's called bullying."

Taylor scrunched her face up. "What's atigone?"

"Antagonize," Amelia corrected her with a haughty expression.

"Amelia..." I chastised.

Amelia rolled her eyes but lowered the bug in her hands. "Fine."

"Now Taylor," I said, pushing Taylor back out in front of me, "Why are you so scared?"

"Because it's gross and weird and wrong and-and-and…" Taylor trailed off, her voice hiccuping at the end.

I pursed my lips. "And what?"

"And…" Taylor looked around cautiously. Then she leaned into my ear and whispered, "And they're always watching me."

I winced.

 _It's not that bad...right?_

I sent a quick glance to Danny for support. He gave me the look that said, "You've been doing dumb parahuman shit again, haven't you?"

"Look, Taylor, they aren't scary. They're just bugs. They just want to be your friends," I tried to assure her.

The odd look Amelia gave me didn't inspire confidence that it was working. Neither did the ghost of a smile on Danny.

"Amelia dear, could you come here please?" I said, trying a different tactic.

Amelia frowned but stepped forward. Taylor cringed and leaned away, but I held a hand on her back to keep her in place.

"Okay, now Taylor, all bugs are alive, right?"

"I...guess?"

"They're alive just like you and me."

"I...but they're icky."

"And at the end of the day, they're just like us." They weren't, not really. "They have lives they want to live. They don't want to hurt you." None of the ones I left in the house did, anyway. "And all of them are beautiful and special in their own way."

Taylor looked at me skeptically, so I pressed on.

"Now, look at this one," I said, gesturing to the spider wasp in Amelia's hands. "This one is _extra_ special. Can you see how?"

Taylor leaned closer to get a better look.

I hoped against hope that it would work. I'd been trying to gently ease Taylor into the world of capes for a while now. To get her to realize, on her own, who I was. I wasn't overly shy about using my powers in the house. I always had these spider wasp queens on me in costume. I hoped that she'd connect the dots.

"Do you see it?" I pressed. I moved the spider, puppeting the extension of its body and doing it's best to give her puppy dog eyes.

Taylor gasped, snapping back in realization.

I beamed.

 _Did she-!_

"It's an alien!" Taylor pointed at the thing.

I couldn't help but blink, frown, and gape.

"What?" Amelia said flatly, unable to believe what she was hearing.

"It's an alien bug!" Taylor repeated, frantically gesturing towards it.

In the background, Danny snorted.

"I...sure." I nodded reluctantly. "It's an...alien bug. It's an alien bug friend."

Somehow, saying it over and over again didn't make it sound better.

"Now, what do we do with our alien bug friends?"

Taylor scrunched her face up in a look of adorably intense concentration. It took all I had to not squeal and hug her till she popped.

"...to be sure…" Taylor muttered.

"What was that Taylor?" I asked expectantly. Taylor looked up, her face set in an ironclad determination.

"It's the only way to be sure." She nodded firmly.

I pursed my lips and cocked my head. "What is?"

Taylor looked up, meeting me with a frighteningly intense gaze for a seven-year-old.

"We have to kill it with fire."

I blinked.

The room blinked.

Mary blinked.

In that moment of stunned silence, Taylor snatched Mary out of Amelia's hands. She looked down at the bug with an unflinching gaze.

"Purge the Xenos," she said, "Kill them all. It's the only way to be sure."

Then she ran out of the room.

With glacial slowness, I turned my head to meet my husband's gaze. Danny stood there, one hand clamped over his mouth, desperately trying to hold in the laughter, the other holding up Akane who was nearly bent over wheezing.

Amelia looked at her hands, out the door Taylor left, then back up to me.

"What just happened?"

I pointed an accusing finger at Danny.

"I blame you for this."

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* * *

"I really only have myself to blame here."

I looked up at the dark sky, blanketed with a thick layer of heavy clouds burdened with the weight of a coming storm.

And I had to go out in the middle of it.

"Nice job Annette," I said to myself as I quickly parked and glanced at my watch.

12:05pm. Danny would be at work, and the kids would be at school. Zoe was picking them up today, which meant I had a cool four hours before anyone else got home.

Plenty of time.

I got out of the car and walked into the mall, glaring at the wide assortment of hearts, roses, chocolates, and cards shoved into every square inch of marketable surface area that could be found. It felt like it was all mocking me, saying, "Hey, it's not like we were subtle about it".

It just made me groan and shake my head, if Danny found out about this he'd never let me live it down.

Pushing it off I began my literal-last-minute valentine's day shopping spree.

Two hours later I was in Southern Hospitality with a bag of clothes for the girls, a bag of lingerie for...tonight, a box of chocolates for the family, and trying to finish it all off with some whiskey for Danny. At this point, I was tempted to grab a bottle for myself too.

"Wait." I held up a hand to the very patient clerk who'd been tending me. "You're telling me that bourbon _isn't_ just from Kentucky?"

"Not technically," the young man answered with a smooth southern purr, "Now, if you ask a Kentucky brewer, then you're looking for a fight, but as far as everyone else is concerned, if it's from the States, then it's bourbon."

I rubbed my brow, feeling more and more confused the more I talked about it. "But I never hear about, say, Tennessee bourbon or, hell, _California_ bourbon."

The man smirked and walked over to the wall to wall shelves of bottles. He came back a moment later with a simple glass bottle containing a smooth amber liquid.

"May I introduce you to 'West of Kentucky?' It's a California brand of whiskey known for its smokey fruit taste and spicy finisher."

I sighed, more inclined to chug any old red wine. "Do you think my husband will like it?"

"Well…" He cupped his chin. " For Valentine's day, I'd personally recommend Four Roses-"

"Got that for him two years ago."

His brow shot up for a moment before giving me an appraising look. "How did he like that?"

I shrugged. "He said it was one of the best bourbons he'd ever had."

"Hmm…" The man rubbed his chin in thought. "He might like Monkey's Shoulder then...I could-"

He was cut off by the sudden appearance of a deafening blast of sound intense enough I couldn't figure out what it was. For a moment, there wasn't sound, definition, or time, just raw noise.

And then it waxed and waned, in and out, in a familiar pattern that called up the darker memories of my mind.

It was an Endbringer alarm.

"Oh god…" the young man trailed off, his eyes wide in naked terror. For a moment, I too held my breath.

The sirens rang for five more bursts, each one pounding it's way into my skull, before finally cutting off, leaving only a deafening silence in its wake. I let out a breath in relief and turned back to the young man who'd been attending to me. He was still frozen in fear, his breath hitching and eyes wild.

I placed a hand on his shoulder, squeezing it gently to try and ground him. "Hey, look at me."

He turned, gazing at me with eyes so young and blue that it made my heart twist to see them so filled with fear. "I-it's Indra innit?"

My hand clenched, balling up the hem of my shirt.

"T-that's what the storm's about, right? It's all Indra."

My phone vibrated with an alert. I spared it a quick glance and grimaced.

 _G: Indra just made Landfall in Chicago._

I cursed.

"Yes," I said, looking the young man in the eyes as I spoke. Comforting lies wouldn't help him right now, that's not what he needed. "He landed in Chicago."

"That's...that's not-" The man stuttered.

"You'll be fine," I cut him off. I knew what he was going to say. Even if Chicago was halfway across the country, Indra's storms had been known to inundate entire continents with their secondary effects.

"We're not gonna see anything close to the full brunt of it."

"But-"

"Just take cover in a shelter," I explained, "This close to the Eye, they'll be up and running. They have food, power, and completely insulated from the elements. You'll be safe there."

He looked at me closely, his eyes scanning for something on my face, some kind of confirmation. Then, slowly, he nodded.

"Go," I said, shaking him.

"I-I...okay, ma'am. Thank you, ma'am." And with that, he turned and ran out of the store.

He wasn't alone.

I could hear the churning crowds, the rise of chaos. I heard smaller alarms going off, this one for heavy storm warnings. I sighed, tossing a regretful glance at the bags I'd gathered, the gifts would likely go to waste now.

My phone buzzed again. Forcing myself to remain calm in the face of Indra's presence, I walked towards the exit, bags in hand, while the other pulled out my phone. I took a glance at the message and snorted.

 _G: Stay home, girl._

 _A: Like that's ever stopped me._

 _H: Early reports are giving severe blizzard conditions with temperatures at 40 below and plummeting._

I grimaced. That changed things. While it wasn't _impossible_ for me to work in conditions like that, all my tinkering hadn't managed to come up with a method for having any variation of my swarm be truly effective in extreme cold weather. Hell, the way Indra fought in it of itself didn't exactly lend itself well to using massed swarms of cheap expendable fighters. He was probably as close to a hard counter for me as there ever was.

 _A: S &R?_

 _H:..._

 _H: Don't risk it. At this point, even Alexandria's having difficulty just flying in a straight line and Hero's sensors can barely see anything through all the snow and ice._

 _That bad?_ I thought, grimacing at the picture my mind painted.

Indra had a habit of turning whatever town he popped up into his own personal shitstorm of epic proportions. While most Endbringers at least had something to hunt down and fight, Indra just sat in the storm clouds while he crafted a storm straight out of the Torah. Trying to hunt him down in the clouds was like trying to fish Leviathan out of the sea.

 _A: What about helping out the medics?_

 _G: Anne…_

 _H: We don't even have a secure location setup on-site. Hero tried some prefabs, but they're struggling. We've never had to deal with paranormal blizzard conditions before. Especially not on the Endbringer scale._

Translation: They didn't even have a medic tent up. Not one that survived more than five seconds anyways.

 _Dammit all_

 _A: Fine...I'll just run homeguard_

 _G: I swear to god, if I see you there I will throat punch you and drag you back myself!_

 _G: Hannah, you got my back, right?_

 _H:..._

 _H: The Homeguard is probably the place you'll do the most good today._

 _G: Damn Straight!_

 _G: Go home and put danny to work making Taylor's little sister!_

I rolled my eyes and stuffed my phone in my purse. It wasn't the first time I'd helped out with the Homeguard, I tended to do that more often than not whenever Indra showed up given his MO. It didn't make me feel any less guilty for letting others fight and die in my stead. I always felt like I could be doing something _more_.

I shuffled my bags around with a huff, making sure I had everything on me. Phone, purse, bags, wallet, keys, coffee. A tiny ritual to push down my nerves.

But it didn't matter. The storm clouds I'd seen outside started to twist as the wind began to howl. The mark of Indra's dance reached halfway across the country.

I bit my lip as I left the hall and approached the escalators to the central plaza. Already I could see the enormous crowd formed from the panic. It wasn't hard to understand why. if I was unsettled I imagine that learning of Indra's presence in Chicago was cold comfort to everyone else.

"Did you hear?"

"Indra's landing in Chicago."

"That close?stu"

"I heard his storms can reach halfway across the country."

With nothing else to do but wait in line, I relaxed and let the sounds of the mall wash over me.

"No way!"

"Endbringers only attack one city at a time, they wouldn't just nuke everything, right?"

"Tell that to Japan. Leviathan didn't exactly go quietly."

The fear in the air was palpable, enough so that I actually considered having Matriarch make an appearance. She'd certainly be able to calm things down, and the level of crowd control she'd bring to the table certainly wasn't anything to scoff at.

"Do you think that Chicago will make it?"

"Why wouldn't it? They have Myrddin on their side!"

"I heard they're getting a blizzard this time. Indra's never done that before."

"Word is, people are getting frozen solid after two seconds in that thing."

While I tossed the idea around in my head, I started molding that energy inside me. Wearing the jacket I was, I fell back into old routines and let it pool in my back. Already I could feel the small eggs hovering on the edge of existence.

"Do we know it's Indra? Maybe it's a new one."

"Oh god, don't even joke about that."

"I wish I was."

In the end, I decided to go through with it. As Matriarch, I could help keep this crowd from turning into a full stampede and trampling someone. This would probably qualify as Homeguard stuff anyways.

"He's got a point. Don't forget about the EB Holiday."

"Maybe whatever sick twisted god came up with this whole thing decided to give us a break?"

"Then he's a real-"

I formed two eggs, nestled against my spine, bulging and-

 **BANG**

 **BANG**

 **BANG**

The silence in the wake of the gunshots was like the deafening silence before a bomb blast. A moment of tension as the whole world seemed to hold its breath in stunned shock. And then it all went to shit.

While the world around me devolved into panicked screaming, my mind sharpened with a razor's focus. Even as my eyes scanned the crowd, I pulled back on feeding the eggs my energy. I reigned them in, holding their development for a moment while I planned out my next moves.

 _This is certainly a flaming monkey wrench in my plans_ I thought bitterly, already splitting off from the undulating crowd and moving towards a shaded bench. I sat down and finally let the energy flow back into the eggs in my back. A few seconds later, I stiffened, then, with a quiet breath of relief, it was over.

The instant the two queens were released from their sacs, they formed the bridge between me and the Swarm. I could feel the connections with thousands of insects, all of them bubbles of information, pieces of a puzzle that made a shifting map.

Immediately, I sent out orders. Like the twitching of my toes or the flicking of my fingers, they moved as an extension of myself. The lesser Swarm fanned out, searching for the scent of gunsmoke, the bark of orders, the sight of anything out of the ordinary.

" _Find them,"_ I commanded, " _Go forth and Hunt."_

To my queens, a different order.

" _Go forth and multiply."_

Simultaneously I set my body to work growing more Queens.

If these people were stupid enough to break the Truce, I wanted to bring the hammer down on them. Make a proper example out of these morons, show everyone _exactly_ what Matriarch thought of anyone who tried to take advantage of the end of the world. I wanted there to be no doubt how monumentally they'd fucked up.

And hopefully, I'd be able to put a stop to it before we all learned _why_ we had the Truce.

"...Grab the jewels…"

 _There you are_ I smiled in the privacy of my mind.

There were five of them, three men and two women, all armed and wearing casual outfits which blended in with the other mall-goers, save for the makeshift masks. Scarfs, bandannas, sunglasses, and balaclavas all covered their faces.

It was an attempt, certainly, but as the probing tendrils of my Swarm wormed their way closer to the scene, I was able to get more fidelity on the situation. A mosquito here, a flea there, and a fly on the wall and I would be able to see, hear, feel, and even _taste_ the individual differences in everyone present.

Faint hints of sulphur, perfume, alcohol, sweat, ammonia, various oils, metal, and the strong scent of gunsmoke.

One man walked around in the center of the hall with a rifle in hand pointed towards the ceiling, the barrel still smoking. On either side of the hall, members of his crew were raiding stores, though at the moment they were focusing on the big ones. One was in a jewelry store, smashing cases and pocketing everything in sight while their friend threatened everyone with a shotgun. Much the same scene happened in the neighboring tech store.

On the surface, it might have even seemed like these guys had really thought this through. They were stealing easily thousands of dollars of merchandise while all the capes had bigger fish to fry. A perfect gig.

"Ah shit, look. They got the newest Ladon hardware back here K."

"That's a nice looking necklace freindo. Mind if I have it?"

"B-but I-"

"Awe, thanks. My girl will really appreciate it."

But the reality was clear in all the subtle tells. The way their hands trembled, the way they swung their guns at everything even vaguely threatening. They wasted their precious time wandering around the shops merely grabbing the most obvious and shiny valuables they could find. The poor fools hadn't even waited until the mall had fully evacuated. They would have had all the time they wanted to rob the whole mall at their leisure if they'd only waited until everyone was safely at home or in a shelter.

Not that it would have helped them.

"You give the best gifts, T."

"Oi! You! In the shitty red vest! I saw that!"

"I-I don't know what yo-"

"Toss me the phone numbnuts, or I'mma starting putting holes in ya."

No, these thieves were amateurs. Amateurs with money, basic coordination, and the audacity to pull off a heist like this, but amateurs nonetheless. I'd dealt with the best grifters and thieves from the long line of the Empire and the new blood of the ABB, and not one of them would have been stupid enough to try this shit. Kaiser, I knew for a fact, wouldn't stand for such a mark on his reputation. For Lung, such an act of relatively petty theft at to weave my web around these treacherous fools.

Which meant I was dealing with independent hotshots who had no idea what they were doing.

Or someone playing a long con, I considered, moving the tendrils of my swarm into position. This could just be the sacrificial play of some big player sitting in the shadows.

But to what end?

I shook those thoughts from my head. At the end of the day, that wasn't my ballpark. I may have heroic tendencies, but I wasn't the type to go patrolling the streets looking for heads to crack. Not since Taylor, anyways.

Fortunately, I knew how to network.

Slipping out my phone again, I sent alerts to my contacts in the Police, the PRT, and New Wave. They'd make sure this info got to the right people to start getting the ball rolling on this. Knowing them, Carol'd likely play defense while Director Holt supports Commissioner Summer's efforts to dig out the rot that caused this.

In the meantime though, I doubted that I'd be getting any support heading my way anytime soon. Indra meant the authorities had their hands full making sure everyone got to safety. On the other hand, there wasn't anything stopping someone from New Wave showing up and helping out, but I didn't feel like setting up a strategy around a roll of the dice. So I was probably on my own.

Perfect.

"Ladies and gentlemen," The person I assumed was the leader started speaking. He was a pretty average caucasian man, average height and build with most of his features hidden by sunglasses, a bandana, and a hood, waving around an AR with one hand"there's no need to panic. Just give us the goods, and we'll be on our way. The heroes aren't coming, they've got a monster to slay. We're just here to make a quick buck. Don't get in our way, and you get to go home."

It was as predictable as it was adorable. I couldn't even count the number of times up and coming robbers tried to put on a show, capes or not.

Still, it bought me time.

Slowly, inch by inch, my swarm encircled them. Weaving behind every crack and crevice, they hung in the vents, the pipes, and the shadows.

A man sitting under gunpoint near one of the pillars in the central hall flinched as he saw a spider skitter past his hand, and dart back into the shadows. He blinked, then looked around to see if anyone else had noticed it. He leaned closer to the pillar, trying to peer into the seams where it connected with the floor.

I decided to humor him.

A single ant crawled out of the crevice and looked up at him with its multifaceted eyes. The man frowned, staring at the ant as if it would provide all the answers. After a moment, he looked back and gestured towards the gunman wandering around the hall, delivering his spiel to the helpless masses.

He turned back to the ant in askance.

In response, five more ants crawled out of the hole and up the pillar. Right before his eyes, danced across the concrete, before settling into the unmistakable shape of a Y.

The man's eyes widened, and in the corners of his mouth, I could see the ever so faint hint of a smile. A mischievous gleam danced in his eyes, and when he turned back around, he sat a little taller.

"You're monsters. Taking advantage of the situation like this." A woman spoke up.

"Oh, we're not monsters, ma'am. Just...entrepreneurs. Honestly, we're-"

"You're fucking traitors is what you are," the man by the pillar said.

I smiled.

"Yeah, traitors!" another agreed.

It started small, the cowed crowd looking amongst themselves in fear. But then another voice spoke up.

"Traitors!"

And another.

"Traitors!"

And another.

"Traitors!"

Soon enough, the whole hall was chanting along. With every hostage that joined in, another gained the courage to speak up. Soon, it almost seemed as if the thieves would lose all control.

The man in the center of the hall hung his head and sighed. "Well, I guess we gotta do this the hard way."

He lowered his gun and pointed it at the nearest hostage. All bravado left them as the panic set in. "No, wait!"

In the adjacent stores to the main hall, the thieves continued looting. When they heard the commotion from the man left alone in the hall, some sighed and shook their heads, one chuckled, and the last merely brushed it off and went back to work.

"Hey, I wanted to do this the easy way." The gunman shrugged. "But you guys had to make things difficult."

He chuckled darkly. "Don't worry, I'll only wing ya."

He pulled the trigger. The hostage flinched. The hall went silent.

And nothing happened.

The gunman paused, then pressed the trigger again. Nothing. While the mask hid his face, the delicious flavor of annoyance, anger, and even embarrassment wafted into the air. In his confusion he checked his gun, trying to find out what was wrong with it. When he checked the trigger, he found the problem.

It was covered in ants.

He panicked, immediately dropping the gun and leaving it to clatter to the ground. I wasn't worried about it going off, the bugs I'd snuck onto the gun had triggered the safety without his notice, his gloves insulating his senses.

"Wha-" he started to say when the critters that lined his bandana leaped into his mouth, silencing him. As he choked on them, he continued to stumble backward in panic. Right into a silk tripwire.

He fell backward into the web I'd laid down for him, his flailing getting him tangled up in the spider silk. Wisps of my swarm crawled out from every crack and every shadow to envelope him, binding him in silk, binding his mouth shut with their bodies, and dragging him back into the shadows with through careful leverage, tight coordination, and sheer weight of numbers. One moment, a treasonous thief stood above the hostages, rifle in hand and waiting to make an example out of someone. And in the blink of an eye, several thousand drones, a mere fraction of my growing swarm, had left no trace of him behind.

The hostages stared blankly in shock.

A second later, one of the gunmen in the side stores paused. The wanton looting left behind, the woman, armed with a pistol, looked around confused, no doubt noticing the sudden silence.

"Hey." She nudged her partner. "Where the fuck'd Nate go?"

The rest slowly began to notice his absence and started looking around. I could smell the fear radiating from them now. I drank it in through my swarm, the intoxicating scent sharpening my senses. With it, I knew it was time.

I merely needed to close the snare.

One of them tripped when they tried to move into the hall, their foot catching on something in the doorway.

A man opened his mouth to shout at a hostage when something jumped into it.

A woman flinched when something flew into her eye.

The last yelped when they felt an intense burning pain in their hands.

For a brief moment, all were distracted, attention had slipped and their weapons unguided. At that moment, they were vulnerable.

Then I descended.

To call it mere darkness would be akin to calling the sun bright. To describe it as loud would be to call the ocean deep. True, and yet unable to capture the full weight of it.

When ten thousand insects descended upon the halls, they filled it with noise and fury, denying it of light and reason.

There was screaming, so very much screaming, in the tumbled chaos of it all. To many, it would have devolved into nonsense, the sheer overload of senses tearing apart any sense of order in their mind. But to me, this was just part of the orchestra. The rising action as I led the dance of flies. Everyone danced at the end of my string, all of them performers on a stage.

To the hostages, I whispered, " _Run"_.

My swarm churned around them, subtly pushing them out and away from the hall. Like a guiding hand, they were directed through the storm of noise and chaos.

To the gunmen, I chittered, " **Bow."**

A couple resisted, trying to fire randomly into the swarm. I already saw the paths they'd take, the ways they'd move. With every twitch, I pushed and pulled them, a nudge here and a tug there. No matter how much they fired, they never got anywhere close to hurting the civilians.

I would not allow it.

When the last hostage was gone, disappeared around a corner, I began the crescendo.

The swarm receded, letting the thieves believe they had a moment to breathe. The moment I saw the hope die in their eyes, I felt a smile carve its way upon my face.

There, in the darkness of the hall, the shadows seemed to drip down from the ceiling, to well up from the floor, and pool together into a form of writhing darkness.

It shifted and melted the swarm together, creating a tall and slender figure that seemed to ripple. Then, two stars burst upon its "face", creating eyes of twin burning lights. They shifted between the gunmen, staring them down with an inhuman, yet imperious look.

"Matriarch," one of them gasped.

A line of embers twinkled across the form's head, forming a mouth of stitched light.

I had arrived.

" **Bow,"** I command again. The room shook with the weight of my command. It was near a physical pressure upon them. From behind walls and ceiling tiles, my tendrils rattled every inch of the rooms with the deafening blast of their incessant droning hum.

Most of them were broken. Their hands too covered in stings and welts to hold their guns, their eyes tired, wills burned to ash. The once easy gig had turned into a nightmare, and none of them were prepared to deal with the consequences of drawing my ire.

Three of them collapsed on the ground with tear-stained faces.

But the last man still had some fight in them.

 _How cute._

He fumbled with his jacket before eventually pulling out a gun. His hand was far too injured to hold it properly, the pistol shaking in his fragile grip.

He didn't care.

I couldn't pin down exactly what drove the young man. Pride? Adrenaline? Rage? Some twisted mix of all of it? In the end, it didn't matter.

He fired twice in quick succession. The first bullet bounced off the floor. The second a concrete column. I ignored it.

Reaching out with a hand, I bid my swarm to descend on him. He fired again and again in desperation. Out of luck, one hit my chest, only for an explosion of butterflies to flutter out and leave my form unruffled.

 _Adorable, but futile_.

The string of a thousand spiders wrapped around his limbs. Tendrils of the swarm wrapped around him, guiding his footsteps towards me. My hand reached out, critters unwrapping themselves from my form and latching on to the makeshift mask. The hood was pulled back, the sunglasses torn off, and the bandanna unraveled.

All that was left was the pale sniveling face of a young man far out of his depth.

"So," I began, giving his head a nudge to look me in the eyes. He flinched, my chittering insects inches from his eyes as the snapped and writhed atop one another. "Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

He glanced away, trying to force his head from my grasp, muttering something under his breath.

I cocked my head. "What was that?"

Finally, he managed to turn his head to me. When those eyes met mine, they had been robbed of all emotion, leaving only cold chips of ice. His face was drained of any feeling, leaving merely an empty vessel of pale skin stretched across sharp bones. When he spoke, I could taste the ever so faint hint of ammonia on his breath.

"All Hail Archon."

Then the world exploded.

* * *

 _A/n:_

 _Godamn.  
_

 _It's been a while, ain't it?_

 _If you're wondering I was spending most of my time working on a new KC-esque fanfic I hope to post before the years up. Then I realized it was October and I had to get something done in time for halloween._

 _Most of the rest of my time has been spent trying to figure out this fucking chapter. It's been sitting around since, like, April and I've only just now been able to "finish" it.  
_

 _Hopefully, though, it's been worth it.  
_

 _Anyways, I'm tired so that's it for me here. I have something of a backlog so I'll probably post once a week again, but we'll see what happens._

 _In the meantime, goodnight all._


	13. Chapter 10

Progenitor: Chapter 10

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 _Now, where are you?_

I was back at the place where it'd started, Jack's Safehouse. It'd been cleared out by now, leaving nothing but an abandoned garage in its wake. Exactly what I'd been counting on.

I stood in the garage, practically swimming in my dark hoodie and jeans. My face, it's skin shifted into a dark spectrum, practically disappeared into the shadows. My eyes, twisted to align more with a cat's, swept the empty space for even the tiniest detail that would tell me where they went. My nose, filled with enhanced sensors picked up from the best canine breeds and wired into a similarly complex neural net, filtered the air and carefully picked apart every chemical apart down to the thousandth percentile.

I could see where the truck had been parked in here, it's tire tracks making clear marks on the pavement. I could smell the oil, piss, and blood from that night. Faint smears of cocaine, hints of heroine, and distant blip of ammonia. Enlightening if I'd never been here, but nothing that would get me a lead on where to go next.

But then, a familiar scent drifted past my nose.

I smiled.

 _There we are_

I ran out of the abandoned garage and charged deeper into the city.

When I'd initially created the black ooze, I'd made it so that when it inevitably decayed outside my presence, it would break down into a harmless, but distinct, chemical. It was a simple smell, reminiscent of honey. Not particularly strong either, though it would be very distinct from the rest of the chemicals filling the air. To most humans, it would be nothing more than a faintly pleasant scent, but to a nose as refined as mine? It was a trail of breadcrumbs that led me right to the source.

I chased it as it lead me deeper and deeper into Merchant territory. I knew they'd taken some of the black ooze from the stash I'd made and tried to disperse it around, not that it would work out for them. I'd be surprised if the barrels of now completely inert organic matter were stored anywhere important, so that wasn't much of a lead.

The people, on the other hand, were.

The chemical the ooze would break down into would work even inside a human body, effectively marking everyone who'd ever tried using my black ooze. Now all I had to do was find my first lead, then daisy chain them together until I worked my way to the top.

I'd read enough history to know that taking care of the Merchants wouldn't be as simple as "Cut off the head of the snake,", but it would be a good start. I knew a little about their structure, but not enough to truly act on it. I needed more, be it to take them out myself or lead others to finish them off. Either way, I had to be thorough or they would scatter like rats.

So I chased the trail, deeper and deeper into the city. Darting into alleys, behind buildings, and onto rooftops. Then, in the distance, I noticed it. It was impossible not to.

In the gleaming light and vibrant activity of Brockton Bay's nightlife, there was only one section like it, entire blocks blanketed in thick swathes of darkness. When the sun fell, the shadows seemed to wrap around it's hollowed out skeletons and obscure the scar from view, like some great maw rising up from the deep and devouring all light within. Every native knew exactly what it was, the memory of it's birth burned into their memory. None could forget.

The Burnout.

I grimaced as the faint hint of oil and ash that drifted by me.

 _Of course_ , I thought, moving towards a more discreet path into the Burnout. _They'd be in the home of the Merchants._

I'd been hoping to find more leads before going in there, to get a more solid handle on the Merchant's organizational structure, ideally even find someone important to copy on my way in. If I was one of their big wigs, like some major distributor or lieutenant or something like that, they'd let me in the front door with open arms and tell me all they wanted. If I wasn't…

 _Well, plan B it is._

I stopped and turned towards a nearby shopping center, trying to look as casual as possible. I didn't truly think anyone was hunting me down, but it didn't hurt to be careful in this city. As one of the largest parahuman hotspots in the world, everyone was on the lookout for anything remotely suspicious. I couldn't get complacent about it, not if there was even a sliver of a chance that it could get Taylor involved.

So I walked into a grocery store as Amelia Hebert with some pocket change, and walked out as an african american man in his late twenties with a bag of chicken.

I was taller now, closer to 6ft 3in, and let the shadow of a beard grow along my chin. My hair, still long, had become dreadlocks pulled into a ponytail. My clothes remained the same, dark jeans pants, boots, a shirt, and a hoodie, though they were a bit more of a tight fit now. Still, I'd been wearing nondescript clothing a couple sizes too large for this very reason.

Another glance around, just to make sure I didn't have anyone paying any special attention, and I started heading back towards the Burnout using the more discrete back alleys.

I walked, careful to take my time and look unhurried. To add to the act, I unwrapped and ate the chicken I'd bought as I moved.

While walking into the Burnout might raise a brow or two, it wasn't exactly unheard of. Though the area may have been without power, water, or even rule of law, people still lived there. For a given value of "lived," that is. Hell, college kids dare each other to go in there every other week. If I just looked and acted like I belonged, or at least wasn't doing anything particularly special, then it'd help reduce the chances of getting noticed.

So, at a casual pace, I followed the trail. With every step I took, the scent of oil became stronger, the ash grew thicker, the air got colder, and the light grew ever more distant. I shrugged it off, focusing on why I was doing this.

Dad had wanted to take that hunting trip this weekend, but he'd been forced to cancel when something from the docks came up. Something about the government getting spooked about Archon and trying to increase production while beefing up security.

In the end, he'd tried to reschedule it to next week. I was disappointed at first, but I knew how important this all was. Then he told me to go ahead and head out, then report on everything I did. It'd give him a base to build his lesson on.

 _"_ _Go out and Hunt, Amy"_ He'd smiled, _"It'll give me something to work with"_

 _"_ _Just try not to be such an edgelord."_

I huffed, my breath coming out as puffs of mist, and blushed at the memory. Then I remembered who'd called me such a thing in the first place, and a fond smile, graced my face.

I relaxed, and walked into the darkness.

/-|-\

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* * *

 _Well...shit_

I'd followed the smell of honey to the first source I could find. In order to get in a larger area, I'd split myself up into my human self, and dozens of rat, cockroach, and even crow selves. They'd all helped me spread out my biosensor network and ensure I was unnoticed, but it'd still taken me about a half hour of walking through outskirts before I found it.

The smell of blood and rot slammed into me like a well.

When I peered into the alley, it was easy to see why. A corpse sat just inside the alley, wasting away. The rats and rot had already dug into their flesh, leaving them unrecognizable. There were no clothes in sight, and from the angle they'd been left, it looked like the body had just been dumped into the alley.

I could smell the bacteria and fungus growing on it, not to mention the myriad of chemicals produced from the rot. It choked the air with it's sick miasma. Still, it was clear to me that this was the source of scent I'd been tracking.

My body worked hard tracking and identifying each and every chemical that hung in every breath I took. Most of it was expected give the conditions. I could clearly see the remnants of my chemical there, meaning whoever this person had been, they'd taken some of my black ooze.

But there was something more to it, something sweet buried underneath the honey and blood and rot, yet so strong and...wrong that it couldn't be confused for anything normal.

It was a cloying sweetness that seemed like seductive whispers of pleasures untold just waiting on the other side. The alluring taste of sweetness mixed with the wheezing rot the coppery blood, and subtle honey, the mix so pungent this close that it would be nearly maddening even to a human's dulled sense.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here?" I muttered, twisting my vocal cords to produce a deeper sound. I sucked down breath after breath, trying to identify that chemical. While part of me broke it down, the rest of me analyzed what was in front of me.

"The rats certainly had a feast with you," I mused looking her over. It was clear they'd been here a couple weeks at least, given the rot and predation. A couple of years ago I probably would have puked, time and the environment hadn't left her a pretty sight.

There wasn't much skin left on their bloody bones. Strings of meat and sinew hung of their carcass while what remained of their guts bulged with the internal buildup of gasses from rampant bacterial growth. Their skull stared straight ahead with empty sockets, a few tendrils of ligaments dangling out of the orbits. Empty needles and discarded brass decorated the surrounding floor, as did a few dead mice, but no clothes. Combined with a certain unmistakable scent, it didn't paint a pretty picture.

"Is this what they wanted to do to you Emma?" I scowled, the thought of someone I knew being subject to such senseless waste and depravity stoking a simmering fire within me. "Is this what your fate would have been? To be used, discarded, and forgotten in some back alley without so much as a grave?"

I huffed angrily, letting that thought fuel me as I crouched down in front of them. Frankly, their state wasn't much of a surprise. The Burnout was abandoned by nearly everyone. The cost to clear all the damage too much to fix up these days, especially after government support dried up.

I'd been mad about it at first, hell I was still mad, but dad had explained it to me. Brockton Bay was, at the end of the day, merely one of the dozens of brushfires the US had to put out. They'd help put out the flames, made sure nothing was going to jump out and kill us all, tried to gather all the spent munitions, and collect what dead they could, but then they needed to move on and keep Archon or worse from trying to fuck us over tomorrow.

Which meant the city was left paying the bill for the most undesirable real estate within 100 miles. It was no New York, and they'd done what they could, cleared and rebuilt what they could. But it was slow going these days, they were barely able to get a building cleared a year.

And no one wanted a dozen blocks of scorched, ruined, and collapsed buildings. The mountains of rubble, the people still missing, the remaining munitions, all of it made it unpleasant to say the least. So no one patrolled it, no one laid claim to it, and no one cleaned it.

No one but the Merchants.

I assumed that others used it for things like executions and stuff, but there wasn't any profit in actually owning it. Not like the various business and residential districts, and certainly nothing like the wealth of center city. It was no wonder they'd laid here for weeks when no one, not the Empire, the ABB, or even the Heroes bothered with anything more than a token effort to patrol it.

So they'd been left here to rot.

 _All alone..._

I paused for a moment, trying to find the words. I felt like I should say something, some kind of prayer. I could remember hundreds of them from Synagogue, but none of them felt quite right to me. Like the wrong tongue speaking hollow words. Maybe this was God's way of giving me a nudge?

But where did I start? What did I say? Did it even matter?

 _...Well...if I'm going to do it, I need to start somewhere._

"...Sorry," I finally said. I licked my lips and swallowed nervously, completely pointless for me, but it kept me human. "I'm sorry this happened to you."

 _Now what?_

"I...hope you're in a better place now…"

 _That's weak and you know it_ I scolded myself as soon as the words left my lips. _Do better_.

"I...hope you're in heaven now. Or at the very least, that God's given you peace."

 _God, this is dumb,_ I thought.

 _But you'll regret it if you don't do anything. Or worse, you'll stop being you._

I ran a hand through my hair, digging into that anger to push past the oh so human nerves.

"Look...I'm sorry if you had a shit life, you didn't deserve to end up like this. Hopefully, you've found peace with God." I finally said. "In the meantime, I'm going to need something from you to get justice, to help keep this from happening to anyone else again."

"I'm gonna need to eat you."

My body exploded into a mass of tendrils, bursting out of my clothes and wrapping around the corpse. I burrowed through meat and bone, wound myself around their ribs and skull. I dug in, stripping them of flesh and taking in the bone. I slipped through and drunk from their skull. I wormed my way in and partook of their heart. I licked the smallest trace blood and meat from their bones. I infected and absorbed the active bacteria and fungi. I consumed it all, broke it down, and analyzed it. From the smallest protein chain to the largest lump of meat still on them. I took it all in.

When I was done, little was left, and all of it on purpose. I slipped from the handful of bones left, now cleaned down to the first layer of calcium phosphate, and worked my writhing form back into my clothes, before retaking my disguise as a human.

 _Well, that was enlightening_ I thought with a hand rubbing the fuzz on my chin.

The cause of the strange sweet scent was some kind of chemical I couldn't make heads or tails of. Not much of it was left at the scene, and even residual marks of it left in the, as I'd discovered, girl's body weren't exactly pristine samples. There was only a little to work with, and even then I wasn't entirely sure what I was dealing with, or if it was even the original substance and not just a byproduct.

As for the girl's brain, it had been pretty badly deteriorated. It had been so long since she'd died that it was mostly just a lump of meat by nothing. I couldn't recover anything but the barest flashes of data from it.

A dark room lit by a red light.

The sound of a horn.

And the smell of blood, sweat, oil, ammonia, and something sweet.

Nothing I could make much work of, unfortunately.

Which led me to the autopsy.

After consuming her whole body, I got a much clearer picture of what I was looking at. I actually had to admit, I wasn't entirely sure my first assumption was on the money. The girl died of an overdose and while she _had_ had sexual intercourse around the time of her death, there weren't any signs of recent physical trauma. Of course, that didn't really mean much either. There were plenty of ways to rape someone without beating them into submission, but it was also entirely possible that she'd just been having normal sex with her lover while they were both dopped out of their minds, she had too much, and they just dumped her naked body in this dump as a cheap grave.

It wasn't a _pleasant_ idea, but I could see it making sense given the context. Still, I didn't really have enough information either way. It also didn't help me find a hard lead.

What did was the chemical running through her rotting veins. It was...possibly a drug. It certainly had mind-altering properties, I just wasn't sure that was the primary purpose. Or, well, the _only_ purpose. It had, well, a lot of confusing, if useful, properties. It could work as a great industrial lubricant and coolant, nice for machines, but it also bonded really well with oxygen to produce an airborne chemical, which was the sweet thing I was smelling.

Again, confusing, don't know why you would want a lubricant that would evaporate into a cloud of sweet narcotics the moment it hit air, but that's what it did. That's not even including how psychoactive it could be if actually ingested or, as her body suggested, _ingested_. Just touching the barest, most faint traces of the byproduct still in the remains of her body was enough to make me quirk a brow at what it would have done to my nervous system, if I had one.

It was no wonder there were various rats lying around here, dead. No doubt they tried to take a bite, then were hit by the psychedelic trip of the century from just a hint.

Honestly, I wasn't even sure how that worked, even with my powers. I could only gather so much from the faint scraps of biodata I had, most of the trace remains were inorganic chemicals. Other parts of it went way over my head, but I was still working on analyzing them. What was important was that this was pretty rare, really weird, and tasted like space magic.

So it was probably power-related.

Which meant it had limited distribution.

I held up the girl's skull, one of the last remnants of her body I hadn't consumed and looked into her empty sockets. Did it still have a fragment of her soul, or was it just an empty shell of the girl who once existed on this world? Her spirit having gone off elsewhere?

I couldn't rightly say. A question for tomorrow, I supposed.

Still, once tonight was over, I'd do what I could to give her a proper burial. It's the least I could do for her in return for what she gave me.

"All I've got to do is find the source," I muttered to the skull, "And I've already got it's scent."

"How hard could it be?"

/-|-\

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 _A/n: Oof_

 _This is later than I'd like. Cutting it a bit close. Took a lot longer than I wanted. I had the chapter written up, but there was one correction I wanted to make. Wasn't huge, figured it wouldn't be a big deal._

 _Took me about four days to do it._

 _Then on the fifth I scrapped it, and wrote twice that level of content in about two hours. I am quite annoyed. Still, it's out. Hopefully you like where I'm going with this._

 _Anyways, that's about it, I gotta get back to work making sure all the other chaps I'm working on are up to snuff._

 _Hopefully, this isn't dogshit._


	14. Chapter 11

Progenitor: Chapter 11

 _A/n: Warning-horror themes_

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 _Find the scent, find the source._

 _Simple._

"I hate myself, sometimes," I muttered.

I'd assumed, foolishly, there could only be one other source of the sickeningly sweet smell combined with my own honeyed tracks in the world.

As I stared at yet another discarded corpse that smelled of rot, sweet, and seduction, in another abandoned alley in the charred husk of the Burnout, I had to grimace. This wasn't the second, third, or even fourth body like this I'd found. The rotting man in front of me was the _eleventh_ such body I'd found that had that unholy scent.

The seductive sweetness mixed with that subtle honey, the rot, and blood to produce such a distinct and sickening smell. By now, I probably would have been vomiting, suffering a severe contact high, and growing increasingly delirious.

Instead, I just felt the smoldering heat of my rage stoked higher and higher by every body added to the tally.

"What _is_ all this?" I asked the dead man, "What are the Merchants doing out here? What in god's name could be worth all this?"

I suspected I already knew the answer to that. It was horrific, terrifying, and gut wrenching, but it made sense given the data.

Experimentation.

A sloppy slapdash version of it, but every corpse I'd found had at least some trace of the strange sweet chemical, all in different amounts and with various additives. Some smelled of the staple hard drugs of the merchants, some didn't have the smell of honey, some had hints of ammonia, cannabis, alcohol, and dozens of other chemicals running through their system.

"So, the Merchants have a fancy new space magic drug and...they're trying to make it _not_ kill people?" I theorized as I chewed through the data on this latest man's body. "I guess that makes sense. Whatever the hell this chemical is, it'd take you straight to your happy place. Kinda makes it hard to market, though, if it's liable to kill you outright."

Sure, hard drugs could kill you if you overdosed on them, and that went true for a lot of drugs and chemicals. Hell, you could overdose on oxygen. The problem, moreso, is what does it take to go too far?

There's a difference between medicine and poison, but sometimes that difference is merely in how much you take. This thing, for some reason, seemed to have an LD50 or median lethal dose, that was extremely low for some reason. Or maybe I was just seeing the dozen freak accidents out of hundreds of successful cases. After all, I only really had the horrific failures to work with. There could be hundreds of hidden variables I wasn't aware of since I was just seeing one end of the process.

 _I need more data_ I sighed.

Trying to build a working hypothesis from incomplete data, especially such skewed data, was working from a false start.

"Okay." I scratched my chin as I mused to myself. Through the various other instances of me running around, I knew I had enough privacy to not be found out, or feel like an idiot. "The source should give me the answers, or at least, provide new insights."

I was lacking something. Despite how many brains I'd consumed this night, nearly all of them were filled with rotten, corrupted, neurons filled with junk data. I could get a few useful memories here and there; some baseball player's batting average, a heavily secured door, the sound of a shrieking woman, the smell of a familiar antiseptic, and the name and taste of a cheesesteak someone thought was the best.

That last part was really important for some reason.

Either way, most of it wasn't really useful to me, even if it did make me hungry. The door, at least, was something. It looked pretty robust, covered in armored panels and high tech locking lugs. Certainly something the Merchants shouldn't normally have access to, but given we were in the Burnout, which used to be a very high profile business district, it wouldn't surprise me if it was a fancy tinker-tech door bought by some big corporation.

"A big corporation…" I muttered, standing up and looking around with all my eyes.

If I was the Merchants, and I was tinkering with a fancy new drug, what would I want? Even doped out idiots knew hospitals had stuff like morphine. It could also explain the Ammonia It wasn't the best antiseptic, but it was easy to come by and it could do a passable job of it. Hell, that was pretty much the Merchant creed right then there was that red light in the darkness. I couldn't make it out very well, but something about its shape was familiar.

So what was a major corporation with a red logo, connections to the medical industry, and had a major presence in what was now the Burnout?

"Well, hello Medhall." I smiled as I looked at the broken skyscraper that had once been the pride of the city, the unlit image of Medhall's crimson crown upon it's shattered roof.

 _"Let's see what Anders left behind."_

* * *

I stood on the skeletal remains of a penthouse overlooking what used to be the proud and shining beacon of Medhall's presence in Brockton Bay.

Medhall is, by far, the largest company that started right here in Brockton, and the city's people had a not inconsiderable amount of pride in it. When the economic boom really hit the city, Medhall not only benefited greatly from it but was one of it's largest causes. In particular, it's partnership with Ladon Industries in the biotech sector.

The first Medhall tower became a symbol of the city's progress and the potential in every Brocktinite to rise above and make something of themselves.

Or, at least, that's how most people saw it.

Personally, I couldn't help but be a little cynical of the alleged white nationalist, Max Anders. He spoke a good game, I'd give him that, but the whole "good Christian values" combined with being one of the richest men in the city while not giving a single rat fuck about the poor and homeless in the city kind of rubbed me the wrong way. All the little comments about how we needed to "watch out" lest the Japanese immigrants in the wake of Leviathan try to "subvert our American identity".

I'm not trying to say that he's probably connected to the Empire 88, or that he himself is a neo-Nazi. All I'm saying is that I was in his old penthouse and the number of books on the rise of Hitler was enough to raise a few eyebrows.

At least, I was pretty confident this was his old penthouse, not that he had just the one.

"Probably used this as a crash pad because it was right next to his office," I mused as I looked out the shattered window. "Come here when he doesn't have time to drive out into the countryside or whatever."

Across the street was the remains of that oh-so-great symbol of Brockton Bay, broken in half with it's top floors crumpled into the pavement next to the foundation. It was a miracle of engineering the whole thing hadn't collapsed, probably because of those Ladon connections.

"I wonder if that means Ladon is connected to white nationalists?" I thought idly.

Then I remembered that Ladon was run by Hero, and the internet was about 80% sure his secret girlfriend-slash-wife was known Hispanic Alexandria. Nearly everyone else was absolutely sure they were perfect for each other. Many a PHO thread had been made about whether Dragon was their secret love child.

 _And that's just the beginning of the rabbit hole_

I shivered.

"Yeah...probably not," I decided.

I turned back into the room, which was likely a billionaire's idea of a cozy bedroom before it looked like it had become a warzone. Given what happened on the 14th, that was probably true.  
The mattress was overturned and riddled with massive bullet holes and scorch marks. A dresser had been propped up against the door to keep anyone from coming in. The massive holes ripped through most of the walls shows how well that worked out. Fragments of glass littered the floor, along with shell casings, metal fragments, ashes, dust, and blood.

Lots of blood.

I walked over to one of the dried up pools on the floor, crouched down, and stuck a finger into it. Feelers on the tip of it reached out and licked up some of the blood to analyze.

"Caucasian, female, blonde…" I trailed off as my network of minds and power went to work processing the details of the remaining DNA. Meanwhile, I sent out various rat-selves to take in samples from blood splatter around the room.

I frowned, none of it coming back as anything resembling Max Anders. Sure, they'd all fit the Empire's white standard, but that meant all of jack and shit. There wasn't even any proof that the man himself was involved with white nationalists, that was just wild speculation on my part.

Then I processed a splotch of blood by a window and paused.

 _She looks familiar_ I thought.

She wasn't terribly tall, though about average for a woman. Brown hair features one might call mousey and an overall underwhelming appearance. Pretty enough, I suppose, but compared to the blonde I'd found earlier it wasn't even a contest. But something about her rung a bell in the back of my mind. I dove into my repository, digging up old maps of my own neural net until I got a match and found…

"Kaden Anders..." I muttered, rubbing my chin.

She hadn't been in the public eye a lot, certainly nowhere near as much as her husband, but I'd seen her on at least one program, and that was enough.

"I suppose that proves the hypothesis," I mused somberly, "Shame what happened to her though."

I went back to searching the room, twisting my various selves running around into unnatural forms to maximize sensory abilities. Despite that, my seeker-selves weren't able to find anything of much use. Most of the remaining books were either too charred, too torn up, or too rotted away by the elements to be legible anymore, the few safes I'd found had been emptied a long time ago. Other than a couple of hidden remnants of the Anders family themself like hair or skin flakes, even a couple from the man of the house himself, there wasn't much in the way of intact DNA or fingerprints left to find.

No doubt the result of a combined effort of Archon giving no fucks, Anders covering his tracks, and the elements being an uncaring bitch. Suffice to say, there wasn't anything else of value here. Still, at least I'd managed to nab a partial sample of Max's fingerprint and DNA. Hopefully, it'd help me if there were any high-security locks still working in the depths of the old Medhall building.  
And that gaping hole in the window, the one the residents of this penthouse must have escaped out of...the edges of it looked melted, like it'd been hit by some high-energy cutting beam. Almost like…

I slapped my cheeks to shake myself out of it.

"Come on Amy," I told myself, "Ain't got time for this grudge against the Empire today. Focus on one conspiracy theory at a time."

"Merchants, Amy," I muttered as I walked back to the window, "Merchants."

Speaking of Merchants, I had to admit they'd covered their tracks here well. I couldn't smell so much as the faintest whiff of my honeyed remnant, nor the sickening sweetness of their new narcotic. Probably whatever they'd stolen from Medhal at work there. If' I'd just tried to track this place down by scent, I'd never find it. Hell, technically speaking, I didn't even know if there _were_ Merchants in there, it was just an educated guess.

I narrowed my eyes, twisting the rods and cones to be more like an Owl, and tried to peer into the darkness. Unfortunately, I couldn't see much of note from all the way out here, not that that meant anything.

The toppled building had been laid low from its once lofty heights and was damn near buried in rubble and the deep shadows stretched over it from it's devastated, neighbors. It was far from alone there, surrounded as it was by leveled buildings and ruined lives, but Archon had obviously made it a major target. Hopefully he hadn't managed to make off with any of Medhall's biotech.

Still, the building was, even half-destroyed, massive, which made it that much harder to surveil. Certainly many times larger than the widest I could expand my range. That wasn't saying a lot, my range was basically a small house, but it meant I couldn't just sweep the whole sprawling ruined complex no doubt infested with merchants all at once. I'd have to scour the building from top to bottom, maximizing my speed and range to optimize my search efficiency, and take the Merchants out one by one in painfully slow and thorough method.

Lovely.

"Well," I said to myself, stepping on the edge of the window, twisting my biomass into more useful shapes, maximizing information gathering, mobility, and stealth. Eyes to see with, tendrils to grab with, claws to climb with, and bulging muscles caged within bone all grew out of me as my body slid apart.

"Time to do some aggressive reconnaissance."

* * *

Mac was walking through the safe house, one hand on his old beat-up baseball bat, the other on his cigarette. He shivered, hugging his jacket closer to himself and taking in a deep drag of the hot smoke in an effort to warm himself up.

"Damn it's cold" he muttered, pulling out the cigarette and tapping out some ash. "Fuckers can't even be bothered to turn on the generator."

The burning embers in the ash were one of the few sources of light in the hall. Out in the burnout, any connection to city services was long gone. No power, water, repair crews, trash collectors, nothing. Unlike most, though, they had a generator rigged up in the husk of the old Medhall.

"Bastards could just turn up the heat a bit, few candles...something to keep me from freezing my balls off in the dark," he grumbled.

Despite his muttering, he knew why they didn't.

Creature comforts were a precious commodity in the Burnout. Even something as simple as a box of matches was something worth killing for. In this scorched land of dark and cold burned-out husks, turning the lights on would send a beacon out into the whole city saying "Hey, something special's happening here!"

Which is why Mac was patrolling the outermost halls of the ruined skyscraper in the cold and dark. Sure, this might've been Medhall once upon a time, but it was old news, a thoroughly looted husk of its former self.

It was also the reason he wasn't armed with anything more than a bat. Walk around with a baseball bat? People 'round here think you're a threat, but not necessarily doing anything important. Put a gun in your hand though? Walk'n round Medhall like you own the place? Suddenly you become _real_ interesting.

But Mac wasn't born yesterday. Put on the outermost defensive line? Armed with barely anything while fucking around in the cold darkness where he couldn't see shit? Not even being told anything about what he was guarding? He was expendable to the guys upstairs.

For now.

"I'll make'em see." He grumbled as he strolled in front of a window, peaking out into the wider ruins beyond. "I'll make'em all see."

He chuckled, pulling out the stump of a cigarette and crushing it beneath his boot. "I'll make'em rue the day they could fuck with Shane Macdougal."

He laughed, letting his own imagination run wild with ideas of how he'd exact his vengeance. "I'll...I'll make those fucks walk patrol in their underwear. In January! And...and...replace the coffee with decaf, no, _tea!_ Fill their shoes with sand, no, cover them with glitter, they'll never get it out."

He giggled to himself in the dark. Then he stopped when he realized he could hear something else. It sounded like…

"Scratching?"

Mac could hear scratching on coming from...somewhere. He tried to focus, but it sounded like it was moving.

"Moving through the walls…"

Before he could really contemplate the bad feeling sinking into his body, he saw something small poke out of a hole in the bottom of the wall. He stepped closer to try and get a closer look, but he couldn't see anything in the darkness.

 _Dammit it all_ he thought, pulling out his lighter.

Whatever it was, it had wormed its way out of the wall and was scurrying around the floor.

 _A rat?_ He thought. It was about the right size and shape for it. He shrugged, preparing his bat in one hand, igniting the lighter with the other. He leaned in closer to get a better look, bringing the tiny flickering flame out closer. The shadows abated, and with it, Mac stared out into the hall.

Nine eyes stared back.

He screamed, flailing in panic. In his desperation, he threw the lighter as far as hard as he could. The next thing he knew, there was a _whoosh_ and some small thing on the ground was consumed by the fire of his light. It burned silently in the dark, the bright fireball a blinding light in the dark, he could scarcely even look at the thing.

When the fire died down, a charred, smoldering, lump of meat sat on the ground, his lighter beside it. He nudged the creature with his bat, but it didn't move. Tipping it over, rolling it around, and kicking didn't reveal much about it either. It seemed about the size and shape of a rat, but-

 _Nine eyes stared back_

-He couldn't see any real details in it. It was just a lump of vaguely rat shaped charred meat. Had it just been a rat? But the eyes...had he imagined it?

Mac shook his head. He must've.

"It was just a rat," he told himself. "Nothing more than that."

"Just a rat, Mac," he repeated. "Just a-"

Then he heard the scratching.

Scratching, slithering, writhing, thousands of them sifting through the bones of the building. All moving deeper and deeper.

That, and the ever so faint sound of a child's laughter.

Mac faltered for a moment, then he grabbed his lighter up off the floor and _ran._

* * *

 _A/n: Sorry it's late_

 _Had a bunch of class stuff last week like an Essay, Exams, etc etc. Didn't have time to finish the chap up._

 _Trav was super helpful in wrapping this up, and he says it's good to go, so thanks for that._

 _Anyways, the mystery deepens!_

 _And Amy's become a horror show again._

 _Hopefully you guys can forgive me for being late, and that this is worth the delay._

 _Next chap should be up in...less time? Maybe? I dunno, less than two weeks probably._

 _We'll see what happens._


	15. Chapter 12

Progenitor: Chapter 12

 _A/n: Oof, this is late_

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 _All according to plan_

If I'd had something resembling a human mouth, I'd probably be smiling right now.

The Merchants were running scared. I could hear them screaming, their hearts pounding in their chest as they beat feet to get out of there. The smell of fear permeated the air, thick with sweat and ash. All of it coming together to make me feel like a conductor at a great orchestra.

As much I'd want to pull a mom and just drown the whole building under a tide of bodies from all angles, my range precluded that option. I'd be forced to work with the next best option.

An inward spiraling pattern using my massed amount of bodies to create layers that would find people and work to herd them into either the stronger parts of me to take them down, or away from the building entirely so they got out of my way. I didn't particularly care if the Merchants were alerted to this. With how fucked this building was, there were millions of nooks and crannies I could hide in if anyone came in force, and in this darkness, it wouldn't take much effort to avoid a human's pitiful senses and get the hell out of dodge if things got hot.

Though, honestly, I'd probably just lurk in the shadows and watch them work to see if they did anything interesting.

Fortunately, the nature of my powers meant I could be more flexible in my response to things than mom. While I couldn't make a massive swarm of bugs to cover everything and be everywhere, I could shape smaller forms with the specialized sensory organs to use echolocation and take sonar scans of the whole building to get a good map of it. It wasn't the best for real-time tracking of everything because of the delay, but it was pretty good for getting a map of the layout and a good idea of the general location of all beings.

It _also_ let me know that there was a basement, a sub-basement, and a void of emptiness that consumed all sound below that like a wall. I'd checked and there were no vents, corridors, or pipes that led directly into it, at least nothing that wasn't blocked with a heavy-duty filter that had defaulted into a hermetic seal after the building lost power. In fact, there was really only one channel that looked like it would go down there, and it was in the center of the building.

Which meant that had to be my target.

Whatever was down there was probably one of the few things still intact in this whole building. If Archon hadn't made off with it, and the Ladon, Medhall, or the Government hadn't reclaimed it, then whatever super special top-secret project down there was still alright. Or, at least, as alright as anything in Merchant hands could be.

 _Don't the Merchants have a Tinker?_ I thought, _Squealer, right?_

She could probably do something with it. What, I didn't know. As far as I'd heard, most Tinkers tended to have a specialty, and the rumor was that Squealer's was vehicles. No one knew what all that meant for sure since all anyone had really seen from her so far were big rigs, monster trucks, and hot rods made from junk that worked far better than they should, but she'd also been quiet recently.

Back when I'd infiltrated the merchants with the Black Ooze, a couple of members had remarked about not seeing anything new from her. Something that was weird, apparently, because she usually pulled out a new car every other day to show off in some street race in the Burnout.

 _So_ I thought, looking at the void beneath my various feet, _That's probably why_.

 _Well, I can get to that later. Right now, I have more…_

I frowned internally as my mental map updated. My recon-selves darted back and forth over the area, trying to take in as much information as they could to make sure I was getting it right.

 _No...this can't be right. Why the fuck…_

But, the more I looked at the sonar returns, changes in air pressure, distant sounds, and shifting sents, the more it became clear.

 _Why are the Merchants running back inside?_

Sure enough, everyone I'd thought I'd scared off had actually just taken some winding path to go deeper into the ruined Medhall building. This certainly wasn't an organized retreat or anything, I was sure of that. The panic was clear in the air and in their movements. I could practically hear them shitting their pants from all the way out here.  
Problem was, said panic had apparently told them to go deeper inside. Was it training? Were they desperate? Was there some other factor I wasn't aware of?

I tabled that line of thinking as fast as it cropped up. I could worry about it after I was done here. Right now I had to hurry and try and salvage something out of my plan.  
I moved, the writhing swarm that composed my being surging forth like the floodwaters of a hurricane. I darted through vents, under walls, into cracks, and every point of free access I could find to cut through the building and get ahead of the Merchants. Moments later I was working on the deeper layers.

I'd probably missed something, bypassing what lay in between, which was why I'd gone for a spiral in the first place, I wanted to be thorough. But I didn't have time for that anymore. Having gotten ahead of the scouts rushing back into the center, I tried to scare them off again. I was more than capable of fighting these guys if I had to, but I wasn't really here for them. I was here for what was on the sub-basement. As long as they got out of my way, I didn't care about them.

Unfortunately, they were still being a pain in my ass.

 _It's like herding fucking cats._

As much as I was trying to scare them off, they were either taking a stand or forcing me to knock them out. Hopefully, I could end this without going too-

 _ **Boom Boom Boom**_

- _Wait, what?_ I paused, trying to figure out what just happened.

 _I...that son of a bitch shot me…_ I thought, incredulously and still trying to comprehend exactly. ... _with a god damn fire breathing auto-shotgun!_

 _How? Why?! What the fuck?!_

How in the hell did the Merchants even have an assault auto shotgun? Sure, it was an outdated model that still relied on chemical propellant, but it wasn't so long ago that such a gun was the cutting edge of military-grade firearms, what with their variable loads ranging from buckshot to the famous inferno rounds that beat back Nilbog. I remember them being all over the marketing and propaganda until the government managed to get their hands on Ladon's advanced mag-rifles. Still, in anything that wasn't an active warzone, an auto shotgun like that was absurdly dangerous, not to mention difficult to find. It'd be one thing for the Empire to have a stash, they actually had connections and money. Even the ABB had a better shot than these bottom of the barrel two-bit thugs.

 _This is bullshit_ I thought as three of my smaller forms burned to ash in mere moments. I could have probably slowed it down if I wanted, but it was better to just take the hit to the biomass there rather than lead him back to the rest of my swarm. It wouldn't take too much effort to hunt down some rats or something. It still wasn't what I'd call fun, however.

I grimaced and pulled back.

 _Okay...bigger problem than I thought._

Then there was a loud hum and the lights turned on for the central set of rooms.

 _Well fuck_.

They had a backup generator, it seemed. Before, they'd just been using lamps, probably to keep the draw on this building down so it didn't look suspicious to anyone snooping around. On its own, not a big issue. But the lights would make being stealthy so much harder in these cramped corridors. Combined with the fact that they actually had something resembling heavy weapons, ones that actually fucking hurt, and were going to start growing in numbers, things were not going according to plan.

 _Goddammit, how hard is it to just fucking leave._ I groused, _I just wanted you out of the way, and now you've gone and set yourself up for the Alamo._

I paused, my various forms retreating back into the shadows as I plotted my next move.

 _Hmm...that could work_.

There weren't, overall, _that_ many of them. Plus, they were bunching up for me. I guess they thought there was strength in numbers.

 _Cute_ I smirked, pooling my forms together and remolding my swarm. _I think it's time to take the kid gloves off._

 _You wanted the Alamo? Let's see how you deal with Tyran._

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Mac ran deeper into the office building, in spite of his heart's greatest desire.

He just had to make it to the checkpoint.

He'd rather be anywhere other than here, but he couldn't leave. This was all he had, the only solid anchor in his life. The Merchants might be shitty thieving drug peddling assholes that eked out a living at the bottom of the trash heap merely because no one else bothered to crush them, but it was a damn sight better than being _out there_.  
At the end of the day, Mac would rather be trash at the bottom of the rung than a nobody starving in the cold dark of the Burnout.

So he ran, deeper and deeper into that howling darkness, fearing for his soul with every step. He could hear something writhing through the vents in the ceiling, wriggling in the gaps between the walls. It sounded like something had infested this place down to the bones.

"Cape shit," he whispered to himself, "Gotta be."

He couldn't think of a known cape in the bay that could do shit like this, not off the top of his head anyways. There were a lot of them, though, so he could be forgiven for missing one.

Still, he didn't think he'd miss a cape that was the second-fucking-coming of Nilbog. Maybe it was something from out of the Plaguelands?

 _But...then how the hell did it get way the hell out here, then? Are there more of them out ther-_

His foot caught something in the dark, sending him stumbling. He turned around, trying to catch sight of it. His eyes caught a faint flicker of _something_ moving with a wet slither.

Mac swallowed his bile and ran harder.

He just had to make it to the checkpoint. Karl andBen, they'd be waiting there. Maybe even Jess'd be back from wherever she'd been. Coffee, space heater, radio, and guns in hand. Once he got there, it'd be in their hands. He'd be done his part. They could take care of things and he, some grunt with a bat, would just try and stay out of the way.

It'd be fine. Everything would be fine.

Mac saw red light creeping around the edges of a door up ahead of him. He slammed into it shoulder first, hand reaching out to the knob to twist it open. Instead, when he hit the door, it was stuck. It barely moved an inch, as if something heavy was propped up against it.

"Come on you damn thing," He muttered, slamming into it again. It barely budged.

He heard something skittering behind him. He whirled around, pulling out his lighter and holding it out like a torch to pierce the darkness. Instead, the shadows fervently clung to the air, as if mocking his foolish desperation.

 _"_ _He he he"_

He pushed past his fear, dropping his bat, stowing his lighter, and bracing both arms against the door. He twisted the knob and threw his whole weight against the door.  
Ever so slowly it creaked open. He pumped his legs harder and harder, feeling as if he was driving himself against a wall. With every inch, more and more red light poured into the dark void, bathing him crimson. Finally, after what felt like hours, there was enough space for him to slip through the door. He turned to pick up his bat-

-and saw something on the other end of the hall star back with _too many eyes_ -

He lunged through the doorway, pushing himself through the crack as fast as he could. On the other side, he slammed the door behind him, propping it closed with both hands. No sooner had it closed than did he feel something slam into it on the other side.

The flimsy wooden door rattled and shook. The oak board plagued with fire damage, rot, mold, and negligence trembled and splintered. Claws dug into it's frame, digging out shards of wood as they carved into it, scratching ever closer to their goal. Ever closer to Mac. He could hear them, clawing, screeching, slithering, chittering, skittering, snarling, _hungering-_

Silence.

Mac blinked.

Silence.

There was nothing to hear but the whistling of the wind. They were gone. The door shook no more. In spite of that, he dared not open it.

It was only when he made that decision that he realized he left his bat on the other side. He sighed, and looked down towards the red light.

There he saw him, illuminated by a road flare lying on the ground, back against the door, revolver in his bloody hands and black sludge on his neck. His eyes were blank, staring at nothing, his hands limp.

Ben

"Oh fuck…" Mac whispered.

Ben didn't so much as twitch. He just lay there, like a doll with it's strings cut.

Mas hesitated. He didn't know what to do next, his simple plan cut to pieces. He was buried in the building, an unknown parahuman threat looking to be the second coming of all he'd ever feared surrounding them, and all he had was a lighter.

In that moment, he felt as if he'd been plunged into a pit of soul-crushing despair.

Then he heard the sound of school children giggling, as if dancing around him through walls, floors, and doors. He heard his colleagues screams echoing down the hall, their howls a mixture of terror and rage. He looked back at the door he'd come through, closed shut to a gaping maw of skittering darkness. In that moment, Mac felt something else.

Spite.

He snatched up Ben's revolver, picked up the road flare, and charged into the darkness.

And from it, unseen and unheard, echoed these words in cruel amusement.

 _Come into my parlor, said the Spider to the fly._

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 _A/n: Oof, this is late._ _Very_ _late._

 _Sorry about that. I'd actually been planning on getting this thing out there by thanksgiving, since I had it mostly done by last...tuesday? I think?_

 _Problem was that the one section I needed to bridge that gap between one part of the chap and the other, a segment that shouldn't have been too big, was the biggest pain in the ass to write. It was only, like, 500 words and it took me four days. Such a pain._

 _In the end, chapter 12 got bloated up to about 5k words, and I decided I could cut it into 2 chapters instead so I'd have a safety for next week. Which I do now._

 _So next week's secure, we'll see what comes later. Sorry if there isn't as much detective work in this one, or even actual things happening, as you may have wanted. This is, again, really half the chap, but I'm spacing it out to have more consistent updates._

 _And thank Trav for helping me actually get this thing together._

 _Anyways, I hope ya'll enjoy this, and let me know if I missed anything._


	16. Chapter 13

Progenitor: Chapter 13

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As Mac ran through the halls of the old Medhall building, he found the only thing he could truly rely on was his memory and his ears.

In this darkness, he could scarcely see a thing, even with the road flare. The red light that shone upon everything only served to warp the meager circle of illumination around him into a twisted crimson vision of itself. The way it bathed the few things he could see in that scarlet light set him on edge, it made every shadow look as if it was some nightmarish creature from the depths of hell.

Dust and ash filled his nose and choked his lungs with every hungry breath he sucked down. He could scarcely feel anything other than the sporadic rumbling of the building as people moved around along with that thing chasing them. Combined with the gunfire, Mac was starting to feel like he was reliving the 14th.

Pops and bangs echoed through the devastated building. The staccato of submachine guns fired at flitting shadows, the punch of a shotgun blasting through plaster, and the roar of his fellow merchants fighting for their lives filled the air. All coming together like a symphony of terror.

Then he heard a heavy thump reverberate through the floorboards, followed by a familiar dull rumbling hum. Mac stopped, cocking his ear and straining to make sure he was hearing things right. A second later, the hall flashed with light and the buzz of electricity.

Mac winced, shielding his eyes with a hand. When he lowered it, he saw that the ceiling lights had come on, the ones that still worked at least. He figured it was probably less than half that was supposed to, but the patchy illumination was leagues better than the darkness of moments ago.

He breathed a sigh of relief, wiping some sweat from his brow. When Mac noticed how much the sound of it stood out, he realized that the building had gone quiet. The once thunderous cacophony fell into nothing. All he could hear was the mild hum of fluorescents, his racing heart, and his heaving breath.

He looked around cautiously, suspicious about what such a calm in the middle of the storm could mean.

"Mac!"

He jumped, aiming his borrowed revolver at the source with a trembling hand. Once his eyes adjusted to the light, it was all he could do to keep from dropping the gun in shock.

"Jess?" He blinked, staring at her like a slack-jawed idiot.

The thin slip of a pale woman rolled her eyes in that way of hers, practically drowning in her thick acid green jacket. She smacked the gum in her mouth, brushed aside her short brown hair, and gave him a dull look.

"Yeah, no shit numbnuts."

"I-"

"Save it," She brushed him off, "We're gathering in the central hall. That's where everything's at, generator, radios, guns, you name it."

"Uh...yeah." Mac nodded dumbly, he'd figured as such. It was where he'd been headed in the first place, it'd just taken him longer in the dark.

She gestured for him to follow and he jogged to catch up to her.

"You seen Karl?" he ventured after a moment.

"Yeah," Jess smirked, "He's having the time of his life with his new toy."

Mac frowned, knowing the gun Karl was no doubt worshipping as they spoke.

"I haven't seen you around in a while."

She shrugged. "Been running errands here and there."

Mac nodded absently, he figured as much.

They walked in companionable silence for a while before entering the central hall. Cracked stone pillars lined the sides, and what might have once been a polished marble lending a sense of wealth and gravitas. The ceiling stretched high above them and rows of doors were in the walls, all leading to the wide array of elevators at the opposite end of the long chamber.

Sure enough, there were dozens of other Merchants in there, all of them arming up with various guns they'd scavenged from around the Burnout. The center of the room was dominated by the large rumbling generator that looked like it was cobbled together out of rusty scrap and strong language.

Next to it was a bulky radio set with a couple of guys fiddling with it. All it was playing was some kind of static, so Mac figured they were trying to get it to work so they could call for help. Though, it sounded like they were getting close to _something_ given the faint snippets of words and a catchy tune they managed to catch. Maybe someone was blasting their own mixtape from a pirated station nearby?

Mac shrugged and turned away. He didn't know the radio game, that was their problem. Instead, someone else had caught his eye.

Leaning against a column and brandishing his massive assault shotgun with a drum magazine and one part pride and another apprehension, was Karl. He looked like a viper wound up and ready to strike at anything and anyone that gave him the excuse.

When Mac and Jess got closer, Karl noticed them and looked up. He gave them a wave and a smile that was all teeth.

"Well Jess," he chuckles, "You're a sight for sore eyes. Surprised you're still alive too, Mac."

Mac scowled at the larger man. "Yeah, no thanks to you."

Karl belts out a laugh and pats Mac on the back. "You made it out alright! And look!"

He spread his arms out to the whole lobby. "You've got nothing to fear! Whatever Nilbog wannabe shit for brains is coming after us ain't getting through ol' Bessy!" He grinned as he patted his gun proudly.

"In fact-!"

 _THWUMP_

Suddenly, all the lights went out and the room was bathed in darkness once more. Shouting erupted, chaos filling the hall. Through it all, Mac could still hear the loud rumble of the generator at work.

But underneath that, just at the edge of his hearing, Mac could hear the chitting, slithering, skittering sound of a thousand creatures snickering in the darkness.  
Then he felt the earth shake beneath his feet. Something was coming for them, something big.

"Karl-" Mac started.

"Yeah," Karl cut him off, standing up straight and moving to get a sightline on the door the sound was coming from. "I heard it too."

Karl walked up to the door and kicked it open, revealing the gaping maw of a hall shrouded in darkness.

"Come on you son of a bitch," Karl groused, hefting the shotgun up to his shoulder.

The series of thumps coming down the hall grew louder and more frequent, yet the all-encompassing shroud of darkness hung steadfast, revealing not so much as an inch of the massive frame lumbering towards them.

Karl let out a guttural shout and fired.

 _ **BOOM**_

The gun's roar was like the clap of thunder, blinding and deafening all at once. A sound so loud you could taste it. In an instant, the world turned deaf, all other noise oppressed into silence, as Mac flinched under the sheer concussive force of such a beast going off. The massive eight gauge explosive slug hurtled down the hall, only to tear a massive hole in the opposite wall when it detonated, sending another shockwave of light and sound down the hall.

Then he fired again.

 _ **BOOM**_

And again.

 _ **BOOM**_

And again.

 _ **BOOM**_

The drum mag fed the auto-shotgun round after round, and Karl fired them one after another into the dark abyss. With each miss, the tiny burst of light on the other end illuminated _something_ moving towards them. It's footsteps like the rumble of thunder, it's indistinct bulk like a wall of writhing muscle.

Mac could see Jess shouting from beside Karl. He couldn't hear the words, but her lips screamed, _"_ _Kill that fuck!"_

Then, Mac spotted something down the hall. A flicker of movement, gone just as soon as it appeared, but it almost seemed like something in the hall had darted to the right…

 _ **BOOM**_

"Karl!" Mac shouted, trying to get his attention, but the man couldn't hear him over the roar of his gun. It seemed, at that moment, that the only sound that was allowed to exist in that hall was that of rolling thunder.

Still, he tried again.

"Kar-!"

 _ **BOOM**_

Mac froze, his heart jumping into his throat.

 _ **BOOM**_

Another flash of light, revealing an open door that he _knew_ had been closed. On the other side of the door, a dark abyss.

 _ **BOOM**_

A giant's dark chitinous hand reached out, covered in writhing tendrils and grasping mandibles.

 _ **BOOM**_

An enormous frame is illuminated in the dark.

 _ **BOOM**_

Mac shouted, he screamed.

 _ **BOOM**_

Nobody could hear him. There was only the rolling thunder.

 _ **BOOM**_

The thunder and the beast.

 _ **BOOM**_

The beast reaches forward

 _ **BOO-**_

And suddenly there was nothing.

Like a gaping wound in reality, where once was deafening sound, now there is a deafening silence.

Mac blinks, unable to comprehend this new reality.

Karl is gone. Simply...gone. The dark abyss and the beast their only companion.

Suddenly, a battle cry echoes through the room. Gunfire erupts, flashes of muzzle fire illuminating the darkness in fits and starts.

Mac could see walls torn apart by gunfire. He saw dozens of... _things_ descend from the ceiling. They weaved between the bullets, darting through the crowd. In another flash of light, he sees something latch onto a woman's neck. A man tries to tear something off his face.

Even as this chaos unfolds around him, bullets flying, friends screaming, assaulted by some fresh new abomination. It was like something straight out of the horrors of the Nilbog campaign.

Mac screamed, unable to take it. He turned around, ready to take Jess's arm and get out of there.

A tendril lashed out from the darkness, wrapping itself around Mac's head and neck. He felt a trail of pinpricks, like ice-cold needles dancing along his skin. The surface of its skin almost looked coated in tar. He froze in terror and looked down the long tentacle, only to find something incomprehensible at its end.

"J-Jess?" He whimpered.

She looked at him with all nine eyes spread across her face, each one pitch-black yet shining with bright reflection along with every muzzle blast. Her arms split open into long tentacles, branching out like the roots of a tree only to ensnare unsuspecting Merchants in their grasp, just like him. She parted her lips. On a human, he might have called it a smile, but for Jess, her mouth split open to reveal a line unnatural needle-like teeth stretching from ear to ear.

"Hush Mac."

Everything was going numb, his mind felt slow and his eyelids heavy. He collapsed to the ground, unable to stand up anymore. He tried to fight it, but the darkness rose up like a wave and consumed him. As he was dragged from the waking world, he heard her whisper in his ear, her tone soft and multitone.

"Only dreams, now."

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 _Finally_

I put the last merchant down with a level of care that surprised me. The more I'd looked into things here, the more their actions seemed to be born of desperation. That, and most of these guys were at the bottom of the rung, just doing anything they could to survive out in the Burnout.

That didn't forgive the experiments that had resulted in over a dozen deaths, or what they'd tried with Emma, but it did provide a measure of context. Not everyone here was a raging asshole, and not everyone had much choice in the matter.

 _Maybe that's just the memories talking_ I considered as I pulled myself back together.

Various scattered lumps of flesh, skittering selves, and lumbering abominations clumped together, the meat melting together at the seams. It bubbled up, twisting and writhing, protein chains linking up as tendrils of flesh wove themselves back into my desired form.

 _I suppose that's what I get for taking them_ I think as I once again took a human form, leaving a few recon selves scattered about nearby just to keep an ear out, I looked around the room with human eyes.

All the Merchants in the building were stable and unconscious. The cocktail I'd used to render them unconscious a combination of a strong anesthetic, sleep aid, and amnestic. It'd sap the fight from them, put them into a natural, if deep, self-sustaining sleep, and they'd be barely able to remember anything about the past few hours. What little they could remember would be so muddled with the bizarre dreams they'd had that, combined with complete lack of any remaining physical evidence of my more nightmarish presence, they wouldn't be able to really tell what did and didn't happen. While I'd been at that, I'd also decided to leech some memories out of them. Nothing specific, just a surface scan of brain patterns to get a general read.

Suffice to say, most of them _weren't_ thinking about how to get babies hooked on crack.

Some of them _had_ been hit by the stray bullets flying around. Nothing fatal this time, but looking at some of the injuries I realized I'd really just gotten lucky. Honestly, this was the kind of thing Mr. Smith drilled into me and Taylor's head enough that I should have probably known better. A stray round can go through walls and houses before finally killing some random bystander a whole block over.

"Stupid," I muttered as I made my way around patching people up. "Mental note, even if bullets can't kill you, everyone else isn't so lucky."

I couldn't replace anything, not in any permanent way, but I could give them the best damn bandaid in existence. I cleaned out the wounded, dug out the bullet if it was still there, triggered rapid coagulation, platelet collection, cell growth, and cleared out any internal blood pooling inside them. It was the kinda thing that would need a full trauma team, a clean room, and no doubt thousands of dollars in state of the art equipment, some of which was ironically enough made by Medhall. I could do it dozens of times simultaneously as an afterthought.

"Well, at least that's over with," I muttered, getting up and walking over to the row of elevators at the back of the lobby.

There were seven of them, each no doubt elegant and refined in their own way back when the building was still running. Now, they were falling apart, rusted, and in some cases torn to pieces.

All except the central one.

The platinum slabs still held a measure of luster, the doors rigid and aligned. There was even a dim red light at the top of it, making it stand out in the darkness.

"Red light, huh?" I rubbed my chin. It reminded me of one of the memories I'd picked up from the corpses outside, but it didn't fully align.

It was also a sign that there was another source of power for the building somewhere. Unfortunately, I could also tell it was locked. Even by my standards, the security for it was airtight. Literally, in this case. The whole thing was hermetically sealed and ensured that I couldn't get so much as a microbe through. Looking at the sonar maps of the building, I could tell easily enough that this was the only shaft that went down into the sub-basement.

"I guess Medhal doesn't fuck around."

I walked up to the door and knocked on it with the back of my fist. There was a dull, thick, bang from it.

"I'm going through you somehow," I mused as I looked at the pad beside the door. It looked like it was some kind of fancy security scanner, the type of thing a rich biomedical corporation working with _The_ tinkertech corporation would have. "Or I could just rip you open."

Probably wouldn't be that hard, all told. The central elevator did look bigger and more robust than the others, but all I needed was to make a crack in the armor and I could slip in.

"I suppose we'll find out-" I stopped.

Pausing, I looked around with my recon-selves, probing the depths of the building for another ping.

Then I found it.

"Well...fuck," I sighed, turning back to renter the ruined depths of the humbled skyscraper. "Looks like I missed one."

 _So I guess that's how you got here._ I thought as I directed my attention out of the building, seeing the frame of what looked like a motorcycle parked down the street. _But shouldn't I have heard a motorcycle rolling up?_

With how dark things were out here in the burnout, I'd had to turn up my night vision, which meant sacrificing color and definition, which meant I couldn't really get much in the way of details for it. Given the fact I hadn't been able to hear it, I had my suspicions it was a Squealer special stealth bike, but without getting a good look it could just be a fancy Ladon E-bike. Then again, they could have pulled up during the firefight. It's not like that was exactly quiet.

 _Oh well_ , I shrugged, dividing my body into a thousand slivers in the dark, _it_ _doesn't matter either way._

"This shouldn't take long."

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 _A/n:  
Alright, I honestly feel kinda sorry about this chapter. Not because it's bad, but because it treads a lot of the same ground as the last one._

 _Now, the reason for that is that 12 and 13 were originally the_

 _same_ _chapter. If things had gone the way I'd wanted, this whole horror thing with Mac would have been over and done with in one chapter, and then the next would have gone over the extra. Instead, it ran long and I figured I could split them in half to give me some more room to breath. Which it did, got chap 14 just about done._

 _So I'm sorry if you guys are getting tired of that theme. I promise we'll be on something new soon-ish._

 _Anyways, thanks again Trav for all your help with this. You're a great sounding board and you fix the grammatical nightmare that I'm sure this unedited work is before you work your magic on it._

 _Let me know any comments or concerns ya'll got, until then,_

 _Bye for now._


	17. Chapter 14

Progenitor: Chapter 14

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 _A/n: Merry Christmas_

I swarm through the dark depths of the building, weaving through rubble and corridors alike, all to chase down that one remaining target. The faint and distant sound of footsteps upon broken glass and tile rung in my head. The sound of a heartbeat reverberating across my skulls. I could taste it in the air, the faint whiffs of gunpowder, sweat, and anticipation. A chittering ping echoed throughout the building, and moments later came the return.

 _There you are,_ I grinned, the pleasures of the hunt at the forefront of my mind, _2nd floor, 5th corridor. Here I come._

A recon form, small, scurrying and covered in eye and ears rounded the corner. Hidden in the dark, it spied on the last Merchant in the building. Immediately, I frowned. Whoever they were, they were doing a good job clinging to the shadows. Even with my enhanced night vision, I could only gather so much from their silhouette. I could tell they were a woman, but that was really only from her scent.

Regardless of who she was, she seemed to be a cut above most of the other Merchants I'd found in here. She moved more methodically, slow and smooth, yet lacked the hesitation I'd seen in others. I moved the recon-self to try and get a better angle, not that I had much of a chance of catching much light this deep into the Bur-

 _Bang_

I blinked, an expression spread across my multitudes. In my hesitation, three more shots ripped through the air, massive chunks of lead tearing through the meat of my small form. Even if it didn't really kill me, the sheer force behind them caused the small body to all but explode.

Still, it wasn't dead. I formed eyes upon the floor and walls from the still writhing sacs of flesh and gore that had been strewn about. With them, I was barely able to catch a flash of the gun she used on me as she moved into another room.

 _A handgun?_ I thought, slightly confused as ran over the image I'd captured again and again.

It looked like a revolver, similar to the one that the Merchant woman I'd dealt with weeks ago had used, but...different. Sleeker, and certainly more hard-hitting.

I'd been expecting a rifle, but I suppose a handgun cartridge made some sense. From what I remembered, they tended to fire larger slugs at lower velocities, so it'd have less penetration but a larger impact. A rifle would probably go right through my smaller forms, while the pistol blew them apart.

 _Well,_ I thought as I reallocated my biomass in the shadows, _there's a way to fix that._

I tracked her as she moved through the building as it gestated. She moved with a faster pace now, searching rooms with a purpose. The more I watched, the more it seemed familiar. The way she checked corners, walls, and the ceiling in rapid but thorough scans.

 _Maybe she's a veteran of the Nilbog Campaign?_ I considered. _I suppose it doesn't really matter in the end_ I mentally shrugged.

 _Time to end this_

As the woman moved into a large room filled with rubble, a tendril lanced out from the shadows and wrapped around an ankle. A lightning-fast shot blew apart the connecting stands and left a wriggling lump of flesh latched onto her boot. I tried to dig through the thick leather of it, but a gloved hand ripped me off and threw me into the air before another snapshot blew it apart.

 _No matter_.

Something burst out of the rubble beside her, numerous arms reaching out with serrated claws for her. She immediately twisted and fired three shots from the hip in a flash of motion, but the bullets crumpled against it's hardened carapace. It tackled her to the ground, tendrils filled with anesthetic coiling inside it's mouth. They catapulted out of it's face, twin stingers ready to inject my custom cocktail into her bloodstream. She twisted her head away from one and snatched the other with a gloved hand. I twisted the innards of my body, creating hundreds of smaller claws and stingers to tear open and seek any bare scrap of flesh to infect.

Suddenly, I felt a pressure against my abdomen. A pressure that erupted into a fire that raced through my being, scorching it all into ash.

 _Pain_

True pain exploded through my collective as a massive chunk of my biomass suddenly went dark. I looked through my other eyes in the room and saw the large form I'd made hovering over her, it's body dissipating into glowing embers in the air. The massive creature that had composed half of my entire biomass disintegrated before my eyes.

For a moment, I froze, my mind racing as I tried to process just what I'd seen. It was impossible. Was that a power? Was she a parahuman? I hadn't managed to get a scan of her body yet. That seemed the most likely answer, but…

But I knew that effect. Hell, everyone did these days. The way my body had dissolved into motes of light, wholly and completely, it could only really be one thing. The weapon that Hero himself had fashioned to win the Nilbog campaign. The large, sleek, glowing weapon held in her hands only confirmed my fears.

A Disintegrator.

 _What?...What?...HOW?!_

An auto shotgun was one thing, but this? This was a monster, capable of vaporizing any biological lifeform and melting gaping holes in anything else with one blast. Only things with durability on the level of the Endbringers or Alexandria could withstand endure a blast against it. It was said that a Disintegrator would either annihilate you, or it wouldn't leave a scratch, there was no in-between.

As I tried to crunch the massive piles of data I'd gathered from the experience of half my entire being getting disintegrated, I couldn't help but agree. More importantly, though, it meant I couldn't fool around anymore. This wasn't a joke, this was a frankly terrifying level of power in the hands of a gang. That could not be permitted under any circumstances.

As the woman stood back up and shouldered her Disintegrator, I gathered what forces I had left, shaping them into the weapon's only weakness. I only had one chance, if I let that weapon go who knows what kind of devastation the Merchants could unleash?

She looked around carefully, no doubt wary of any more creatures.

I growled, fury and anger at what she'd done to me fueling my purpose. My entire being growled with me. Hundreds, no, thousands of genetically fine-tuned insectile creatures chittered loudly in the ceiling, walls, and floor.

The woman looked around, fear finally creeping into her form. She turned her Disintegrator towards the wall, as if to blast her way out.

I wouldn't give her the chance.

Like a wave, I crashed upon her.

To say she fought back would be like saying a man resisted the raging tempest of a Typhoon. It was over in an instant, the insurmountable deluge of me smothering her light like a man's fist snuffing out a candle. I bypassed the only two blast of the gun she managed to get off, latched onto her bare neck, and bit in. My custom venom poured into her veins. I could see the way her nervous system reacted, her brain stuttering into a lower level of operation as sleep overcame her.

Moments later, she collapsed to the ground face-first as a boneless heap.

My swarm gathered at her feet, and slowly formed me piece by piece.

 _Serves you right_ I thought, sneering at her sleeping body, _you merchant piece of…_

 _Hold on_

Something about her DNA...hell, her whole body, was familiar to me. _Very_ familiar.

I swallowed thickly, _I have a bad feeling about this._

I gently grabbed her shoulder and turned her over with one hand, and with the other, I converted the outer layers of flesh into a bright bioluminescent organ. Light erupted in the room, illuminating everything as I twisted my eyes back into a traditional human spectrum. The moment I turned her over, I cringed.

There was no mistaking that those Kurdish features.

"Ah shit," I cursed, grimacing at that star-spangled bandanna as the last flicker of consciousness left those familiar brown eyes.

"I am _so_ fucking grounded," I sighed despondently as I allowed my face to flush with shame and embarrassment. Already my mind was spinning through the millions of ways I was now fucked. I gave the unconscious woman a guilty look.

"Sorry Aunt Hannah."

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 _That took longer than I'd thought_

I'd been fiddling with the lock for the high-security elevator when the beetle-shaped partition I'd left on Aunt Hannah alerted me to her rising brain activity. I could sense the way she slowly regained muscle control, REM falling out of cycle, and her melatonin returning to normal levels. I briefly consider injecting GABA and glycine to artificially impose sleep paralysis so she couldn't shoot me in the back with a disintegrator before I'd explained everything, but I threw that out with barely a second's thought.

The last thing I needed here was to get myself in even _more_ hot water.

Instead, I walked up to her with slow measured steps, even as I could feel her mind slowly recalling the pieces of the past hour. Or, well, attempting too. I'd still injected her with amnestic/anesthetic I'd given everyone else, I'd just given her a counter agent to go along with it so she wouldn't be as affected. Even still, she'd been well and truly asleep for nearly half an hour, and I couldn't be sure how much of her short term memory had remained.

Sure, I'd given her a counter-agent to the amnestic/anesthetic I'd injected into her bloodstream, but as far as I could tell that only reduced the effects, it didn't negate them. Case in point, it'd taken her nearly an hour to finally wake up. Who knows how much she'd lost?

 _There we go_

I saw her eyes flutter and felt her heart stutter as her mind dig itself out of the gutter. Her breath trembled, muscles twitching in growing awareness. I could sense the moment when she realized she wasn't somewhere familiar, the way tension snapped into her form. Aunt Hannah hid it well, I had to admit I was impressed. I couldn't see it on her form draped on the chair, she'd even managed to force her power to keep the form of the Disintegrator on the floor, but I could read it in the chemical breakdown of her body from my beetle on her arm.

Intentionally making my footsteps loudly scuff the floor, I tried to let her know I was coming so she didn't get spooked when I crouched down in front of her. I tried to catch Aunt Hannah's eyes, but she was stubbornly keeping them closed. Frowning, I opened my mouth.

"I know your awake."

It was at that moment that I realized two things. First, I'd actually forgotten to discard my disguise of tall, muscular, black man in his prime with an almost unnaturally deep voice. Second, that, Aunt Hannah could be a terrifyingly fast draw under pressure.

Within one blink of me realizing my mistake, I was staring down the barrel of her Disintegrator, the light at the end radiating with the ominous glow of a dying star, the whole weapon trembling with fury a billion hounds fresh from hell tearing at their frayed leash.

"Move, and you die," Aunt Hannah growled.

I dropped the disguise, the false flesh falling away like so much raw fat cut from the bone. The inert biomass plopped to the floor, splashing out our feet, and leaving me in my bare skin of Amelia Hebert staring at my Aunt Hannah with a stunned expression.

She paused, lowering her gun and staring at me with wide eyes and a slack jaw. "Amy?!"

I sagged, smiling at her in relief, "Yeah, Aunt Hannah, it's m-"

She shoved the Disintegrator into my face again.

"Prove it," Aunt Hannah said, a dead serious look in her eye, finger on the trigger.

"...Uh" I stared at her stupidly, jaw slack.

"PROVE IT!" She roared.

My mouth ran before I could think better of it.

"I first met you in person after Aunt Grace dragged you into a girl's night out with mom, and they dragged you home because you couldn't hold your liquor and wouldn't stop hitting on other patrons, and you threw up on my backpack and mom got mad 'cause it ruined my school stuff but Aunt Grace was super happy 'cause she said it'd finally dislodged the stick you'd shoved up your ass the size of-mmrph"

"Up up up" Aunt Hannah shushed me with a hand on my mouth. Her Disintegrator had disappeared in a flash of green light, and an emerald war fan appeared in one of her pockets.

"That's…that's enough..." She began hesitantly, unable to look me in the eye. Not that it could hide the embarrassment radiating off of her. "...I believe you, Amelia."

She glanced at me from the corner of her eye. "Put on some clothes."

I rolled my eyes. _Humans_.

 _Still…_

"Fine." I sucked up the inert ooze around me and peeled off a set of pseudo leather clothes from my skin.

Aunt Hannah gave me an odd look before eyeing the room around us. At a guess, I opened my mouth.

"All the Merchants are asleep on another floor. They shouldn't wake up for a few more hours. Even if they do, they're all tied up." I shrugged, gesturing to my own bare face. "We got privacy, you can take off the mask."

Aunt Hannah looked hesitant, but after a moment she finally tugged down her star-spangled scarf. "Merchants?"

"Yeah, the…" I blinked, "You don't…"

She looked at me uncomprehendingly.

"Oh no…" I said quietly as it dawned on me.

"Amelia." She scowled. "Oh no what?"

"You...may have forgotten more than I thought?"

"Forgotten?"

"Yeah, I mean I tried to counter the amnestics I gave you, but it looks lik-"

" _Amnestics?!"_

"Uh...yes?"

"...!"

"In my defense, you used a Disintegrator on me first."

"... _ **!**_ "

"...granted I _did_ kind of ambush you with a tentacle monster."

Aunt Hannah buried her head in her hands and groaned, exhaustion pouring off her.

"Just...just explain what happened. And where we are."

"Uh...do you promise not to get mad?"

She peeked out from her fingers to level a withering glare at me.

I cringed.

"Right, well, see, what happened was…"

About five minutes of very awkward explanations later, Aunt Hannah was staring at me with the kind of abject disappointment, shame, and complete disbelief that I'd really only seen on my father. After what felt like hours of pained silence, she finally opened mouth.

"What," She said flatly.

"Well...I mean…" I started, "it seemed like a good idea at the time?"

"You say that like you made a mistake," She said with a dangerous gleam in her eye.

"...yes?" I said, nearly wincing at the pitch.

"And it was?"

"Um...drugging you?"

Aunt Hannah gave me a pitiless smile and a humorless chuckle, her dark eyes promising nothing but grim tidings in my future.

"I'll let you think on that," She said, getting up and patting me on the shoulder as she walked to the door. "In the meantime, I'll be heading towards a window before we get blown up."

I blinked.

"Wait, _What?!_ "

I yelled, jumping up to my feet and chasing after her.

"You didn't think I came out here alone, did you?" She asked, a smile in her voice.

"I mean...I did, actually." I frowned, "But if you weren't the only one out here, why'd you come in alone?"

"Well, it's hard to remember, since the past hour is a bit fuzzy thanks to _somebody_ ," She said pointedly.

I winced. "Sorry."

"Hmph," She kept moving.

Still, I could tell she didn't know where she was going.

"Let me lead the way," I said, jogging in front of her, "It's the least I can do."

"Yes," She said drily. "It is."

 _Oh yeah, I'm going to have a fun week_ I grimaced, already envisioning the endless taunts from dad.

A few turns later, I'd taken us to the outer wall facing a row of broken windows.

"This'll do," Aunt Hannah said, pulling on her power in a flash of green light to summon a sledgehammer. A few bashes against the fractured glass to clear out the sharp edges, and she dismissed it.

While she worked, I couldn't help but worry about what she'd said. "So...blowing up?"

"Yeah," She nodded, turning her power into some kind of boxy-device attached to pistol grip and a collapsible stock. "Yeah, well it's a bit fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure I went out with a drone escort."

"A...a what?" I blinked in disbelief, "You guys fly drones up there?"

"Yeah, all the time," Shen shrugged and clicked a button and a blinking green laser light shone out of one end. "But they're autistic, so it's fine."

At my befuddled look, she explained. "That means they're specifically designed _not_ to communicate with other devices, especially through digital networks. Instead, they rely on things like laser or quantum coms to interact with whatever station they're tethered to. Combined with the best Ladon encryption codes out there, they're as close to unhackable as you can get."

"There's an ocean of difference between 'unhackable' and 'mostly unhackable'." I pointed out.

"Well, the only way you could get access to them is by directly plugging into the drone, or into the station it's tethered to. Even then, you have to get through encryption algorithms devised by the greatest tinker in the world." Aunt Hannah responded, "command figures the power projection and long term support that the drones offer is more than worth the risk. Given how effective they've been since we introduced them, I have to agree."

"I feel like most people would be opposed to the idea of a bunch of robots hanging over their heads watching their every move just waiting to turn on them." I frowned.

"Yeah, well it's not exactly common knowledge. They use stealth tech to stay quiet." She explained, nodding at her device and leaning out the window to point it up into something in the Brockton Bay skyline. "And I need to tell it that I'm ok before command shoves missile or two down our throat."

"They're _armed!?_ " I shouted, feeling the hysteria creeping in.

"Not like that," She waved me off nonchalantly, "Not these ones anyhow. Best they got are some less than lethal measures like foam grenades or stun lances. It's biggest weapon is its sensor and communications package."

"The PRT has a direct line to the Naval base out in the. Wouldn't take but a few calls to send some UCAV's to check the situation out. Maybe even some Marines or a couple of cruise missiles if they're feeling trigger happy."

"Are you fucking _insane?!_ " I exclaimed, "You'd really turn the middle of the city into a warzone?"

"We're already _at_ war, Amelia" She answered coldly.

The display on her device lit up, a happy little chime pining off it. She smiled with her eyes as the faintest smirk played upon her lips. "We're good. Looks they sent Armsmaster this way instead of a missile. Heck, knowing him he might still swing by."

I scowled, my bones twisting under my skin in discomfort. The idea of armed drones hanging up there, waiting to rain down destruction at any moment feeling deeply unsettling. And the idea that Aunt Hannah knew about it and was ok with it?

It made me feel sick.

It wasn't too much longer for Aunt Hannah to finish her work up. She sent a few updates to her eye in the sky, and console made sure she was alright. I figured part of it included codes and passphrases for making sure she wasn't mastered or under duress. The most surprising part was what she said next.

"Alright," She said, pulling herself back inside the hall, her posture ever so slightly more relaxed than before. "Gave console the update on the situation, and about how I'll be finishing my investigation. Also told them about you."

"You told them about _me?_ " I said, taken aback.

"Well," She rolled her shoulders, the boxy device in her hands flickering into a basic gauss pistol holstered on her thigh, "Not you specifically, but that I'd met up with an independent friend and I'd be looking into things with them."

"Huh," I said, relieved, "I guess that makes sense. Wouldn't want them to freak out if they catch a glance of me with you."

"Yeah, I'll probably get grilled about it later at base, but we have protocols for this kinda stuff." She agreed.

"What are you gonna tell them?"

Aunt Hannah sighed, her shoulders slumping forward, "it's probably going to be a messy conversation and involve a whole lot of redactions."

I furrowed my brow, "Why would you be redacting anything?"

"Because your identity is classified." Aunt Hannah explained.

At my blank, stunned, expression she continued.

"The government has files on your whole family, Amy. They did it because of Annette. It's not a particularly special case, either. My understanding is that we've got detailed files on the personal lives of every major parahuman operating in North America." She said, "It's just that those files are classified at the highest levels. Most people working in the PRT don't know they exist, let alone what's inside them. The only reason I have access to your mother's file is because, well, I helped make it."

"So you just have fucking specs on all of us!" I shouted, "You're analyzing our every fucking moment, trying to see if we step out of line or what you can use as leverage?"

"Or course." She shrugged, "the 14th was a wakeup call. We thought we understood Archon, but we'd never seen that level of sleeper cells coming. It was the kind of threat we'd never considered since the cold war, and even then, nothing on this level. The fact that he'd discovered a loophole to avoid precogs only made it all the more terrifying."

"If we have to sacrifice a little freedom to keep this nation's people safe, I'll gladly pay that price."

"That's easy for you to say," I scowled at her, "you're a part of this system, you're a cog in the machine. What about the rest of us? How do we know that the government won't abuse this power? How do we know they won't use this information to quietly silence the troublemakers?"

"They're laws in place to stop that. Checks and balances. The constitution provides for-"

"Like that really matters." I cut her off, "The constitution is only a piece of paper, it only matters as long as people listen to it. If the whole government decides it likes it nice comfy throne and it wants to burn that ancient scrap of whims in front of us, what the fuck are you gonna do about it?"

She stared at me for a long hard moment. There was a conviction in her eyes, a fiery light of pride and truth that refused to be snuffed out. But how the fuck was I supposed to back down? How was I supposed to just nod along to the idea of this country becoming a police state?

Finally, she opened her mouth. "You need to have faith in the American people, Amelia."

"I would think you'd know something about that."

I exploded in fury, my skin literally bristling flickering in an array of aggressive colors, bones cracking and jutting out of my flesh in jagged spikes, and eyes flashing with orange bioluminescence.

"Don't you fucking _dare!_ " I growled, "You don't know the first thing about faith!"

Aunt Hannah just looked at me coldly and said, "I know if we'd had these policies two years ago, your mother would still be alive."

And like that, all the fight drained out of my body. In its place, I felt a cold discomfort.

 _Is...is that true?_

I didn't want it to be, but...it made a certain kind of sense. I wanted to deny it, but no one could deny the kind of damage Archon's sleepers had done, or that it had lead to mom's death. Would it have been enough? Would that kind of tradeoff been worth it? I was hardly the only person who lost something that day, what about everyone else? Would they have been spared pain if the government had played big brother earlier? Was freedom worth the price for safety?

Suddenly, I wasn't so sure anymore.

"...Sorry," I muttered, shrinking in on myself. I felt small now, like an idiot child put in her place. I felt like I should have been right, I wanted it so badly to be true. But…

But at the end of the day, I wanted my mom back.

"Sorry," I repeated, hanging my head, "I just…"

Aunt Hannah stopped me with another hand on my shoulder. "I know," She said simply.

There wasn't any anger on her face now. No more stone or coldness. The fire was still there, but it was now burning with the warmth of understanding.

She didn't need to say anymore.

"Come on," She walked back into the building, "If I remember right I came out here to investigate the spike in Merchant activity. I'm hoping I can ask some of those guys you got tied up about the recent kidnappings, border expansion, and this 'black ooze'."

I chuckled mirthlessly. "Ah...yeah...about that…"

She sighed tiredly, "I'm not going to like the answer to that, am I."

"If it helps, dad already chewed me out over it?" I offered.

"Hmm. We'll see how he feels about it after this newest escapade."

I winced.

"Er, well, in that case I already have my own lead on some stuff,"

She eyed me from the side, "Oh?"

I chuckled, feeling a bit nervous now that I was on the spot. "Yeah…"

 _Although...now that I think about it…_

"Yeah...and I think you can help me out with it."

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 _A/n:_

 _Alright, next chapter out. Hope ya'll are having a nice holiday season. More importantly, I hope ya'll like this chapter._

 _I had both my beta's go over it, and they said its good, so here you go. Most worried about the whole Aunt Hannah thing since, well, there wasn't much in the way of leadup for it._

 _Ah well. I've got a plan and it either works or it doesn't. No use worrying about it now._

 _Next chapter will be out...in a week? Maybe?_

 _I'm doing a lot of updating to a bunch of stories right now and I'm working on posting a new one. Once this arc is over I'll probably shift over to monthly posting, as planned._

 _Though I dunno, maybe my new story will bomb harder than Nagasaki and I'll fall back to this._

 _We'll see what happens. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the season and this chapter._

 _I'll worry about everything else later._


	18. Chapter 15

Progenitor:

Chapter 15

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 _A/n: Sorry for the delay and how sparse this chapter is._

The two of us stood in front of the elevators in the main lobby. All in all, we were quite the contrast. I was currently a young, tall, muscular caucasian girl with pale skin, freckles, and decked out in enough leather to run a biker gang. Aunt Hannah beside me, on the other hand, was a comparatively short, bronze-skinned, woman with a runner's build decked out in olive green unpowered light armor, combat webbing, and enough star-spangled glory to run the fourth of july.

I walked up to the door, namely the keypad, while Aunt Hannah looked pensively at the secure slabs of metal. I wasn't sure what she was thinking, either if they were intimidating to her, suspicious, or wondering how much boom she could get away with using to knock it down before someone chewed her out for it.

"So…" I began, " I was going to see if I could trick the biometric sensor into thinking I'm Max Anders since I figure if anyone would have access it'd be the big boss,"

Then I caught the ghost of a smile on Aunt Hannah's face and frowned.

"What?"

"Nothing," she waved it off.

I held my gaze for another moment, before shrugging it off. "Anyways, I figure I can get a good enough estimation of his DNA, and I could probably match his voice and appearance perfectly if I wanted. The _real_ problem would be trying to match fingerprints."

I hummed as I tapped my bottom lip, thinking through the problem again. Already my neural net was burning through solutions. "See, your fingerprints aren't tied to your DNA, they're shaped by your life experiences. So's a lot of things, actually, like height. Even identical twins can grow up to have different heights and prints based on diet, exercise, and basic wear and tear through life."

"Still, I did manage to get a couple of partial prints off his penthouse down the block. It's not perfect, but it _is_ a basis to work with," I continued as I walked up to the panel to inspect it closely. "You know if I'm lucky I might even be able to grab a couple of prints off this thing."

I leaned in closer, modulating my eyes to pick up finer details of close up objects. Picking apart the details in the dust on top of the glass, I could get _something_ , but it was looking like they were far from well preserved. I wasn't surprised, I'd barely gotten anything from his penthouse and that hadn't just been the scene of a firefight.

Still…

"I might be able to cobble something together," I said, reaching out with a finger to pick up the dust and get a reading. "At the very least, I might be able to get a base to start working on some combinations. Shouldn't take me more than a few thousand tries to get."

I turned to the number pad, where it looked like there a few more. All the better, really. "Just sit tight and I'll-"

 _ **Clamp**_

I jumped, jerking up at the sound, only to notice a strange disc-like object attached to the doors. With a few clicks, it expanded into a series of rings attached to the door at roughly the height of a person.

I opened my mouth, "What's-"

Aunt Hannah cut me off by yanking me back away from the panel. She pressed some kind of trigger-like device in her hands, and the rings on the door began to hum. She looked down at the screen wrapped around her forearm. As she worked on it, the door began to heat up and glow, the waves of superheated air radiating off it distorting the light. After tapping a few buttons and manipulating the screen for a few moments, she shrugged and pressed the trigger.

The door exploded inwards in a blinding cloud of superheated gas, vaporized metal, and plasma. As my eyes took in every scene, the radiation forcing me to replace the cells just as fast as they burned out from the intensity, I could see the cloud of plasma deflected away from us and pushed back into the door and elevator by field of distorted air emitted by the rings.

When it was done, the rings hung in the air for another moment, before collapsing to the ground with a clatter, unharmed by the small sun it'd created. The elevator, however, was a different story. A neat hole had been melted into the once pristine platinum doors, ringed with white-hot metal. The inside of the elevator was little more than cooling slag, even the floor had been melted away and dripped down the shaft.

For a moment, I was at a loss for words.

"Come on, Amy," Aunt Hannah said, patting me on the shoulder again. The ringed device on the ground disappeared in a flash of green light, and some kind of oversized grapple gun mated with a harpoon gun appeared in her hand. "We're gonna need to head down."

"What the hell was that?" I finally said.

"What, that?" she answered nonchalantly, "Just a breach kit."

"You're telling me the way you guys open doors is to make a fucking _star?_ " I exclaimed.

"Don't be melodramatic, Amy," she waved me off, "This is for special and heavy ops, and it's a variable yield smart device. It scanned the area and found no traps or alarming sensors, so I decided to cut out the middleman with the most expedient method."

She gestured to the now missing floor of the elevator. "I knew it'd clear out the area, and it gave us our route down."

Aunt Hannah walked up to the door and planted her feet. She braced the gun against her shoulder and fired it at the floor with a powerful _Thump_. The massive spike slammed into the ground, it's tip buried in the marble floor, then it began to hum and vibrate. As it spun up, the spike moved like a drill and dug it's way deeper into the floor.

When it was done, she tested the anchor with a few tugs. Satisfied, she backed over to the door and looked down the hole.

"You need a ride down?" she asked as she attached the cable to some kind of harness on her combat webbing.

I sighed, forcing the weirdness and discomfort away from me. Aunt Hannah lived in a different world from me, dad, or even Aunt grace. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised how much of a different outlook it'd all given her. I'm not sure even Mom had lived anything like her life.

"No," I said, already dissolving into a swarm of fireflies. "I'll be fine."

As she looked at my growing swarm of glittering lights, I saw a genuine smile stretch across her face. The way the edges of her eyes crinkled ever so softly, her lips pulled into a gentle grin, the glow of my being bathing her sun-kissed skin in warm light, it all reminded me of happier times. The smell the ocean breeze and barbeque, the sun sitting low on the horizon and the fire illuminating the night, and the sound of laughter and joy.

I pushed the memories away before the pain became too much.

"Well, then, here we go," she said, then jumped back.

And down we fell, into the depths of hell.

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At the bottom of the elevator was another heavy security door. I briefly considered trying to open it myself in an effort to show off in front of Aunt Hannah, but looking over my stores I wasn't really up for it.

I couldn't get tired, not precisely as humans meant it anyways. I could get bored, and I suppose I wasn't immune to a certain level of mental fatigue from doing stressful or repetitive things, but truly natural human exhaustion and tiredness were trivial things for me to cycle out of my system. I could, however, run low on resources. Biomass in particular, but there were other inorganic compounds and elements that I liked to have stores of to utilize at a moment's notice.

With Aunt Hannah having disintegrated about half of me, and roughly half of my stores along with it, I was running low. I wasn't in danger of death or anything, and I still had plenty enough mass to maintain the shape of Amelia Hebert, but anything outside that was stretching things a bit. I had very little wiggle room and I didn't feel like pushing it if I didn't have to.

Besides, watching her blow doors down with a ball of plasma wasn't getting old anytime soon.

As the glowing edges of the ring rapidly cooled when exposed to open air and the breach kit clattered to the ground again, I decided to comment on the decidedly unsubtle approach we'd gone with.

"I sure hope no one heard that,"

Aunt Hannah just shook her head and chuckled. She flexed her fingers and the breach kit disappeared in another whirl of green light. It flowed back to her like a loyal dog, reappearing in her hands as what looked like a spec-ops version of the standard military gauss rifle. It was shorter than most of the others I'd seen, and had another barrel slung under the primary one, along with a variety of other attachments I couldn't begin to guess at.

"Come on, Amy." She gestured a hand forward and I followed her up to the simmering hole in the door.

We stepped through the hole and immediately I knew something was wrong. The lights were off, so we couldn't see much, but the molten glow from the breach gave me something to work with. Shifting the rods and cones around in my eyes allowed me to fine-tune my vision to suit the dimming light, not that there was much to see.

We were in a hall. A _long_ hall that slowly sloped downwards until I couldn't see anything but a dim red glow at the end. By our right was a guard shack with what looked like gun emplacements, and by our left was what looked like a small monorail that followed the hall with a trolley designed to hold packages, but not people.

The walls were made of, from what I could tell, concrete and the floor was a kind of sleek tile. There were defunct cameras in the corners, vents along the tops of the walls, and dead lights in the ceiling. A sleek strip of paint labeled this area sub-basement 2, and pointing down the hall was an arrow labeled, "Hazardous Biological Experimentation Lab 1 & 2".

That was disconcerting enough on its own, but I could also smell something. Various body fluids, ammonia, grease, oil, battery acid, and most notably, honey and sickening sweetness. The scent was faint, but it was definitely much stronger than anywhere else I'd gotten it in the city.  
Aunt Hannah took another step forward, but I held a hand out to stop her.

Most worryingly of all were the tiny divots and scratches in floor, along with various holes punched into the concrete. They were small and precise, but deep, likely from some high-velocity gauss weapon of a low caliber if I had to guess. There was no pool of blood or anything where we were standing, in the entryway, but the blood I could smell from the shack and further down the hall didn't exactly make that a good thing.

"Careful," I said, frowning as I continued to break down the chemical composition. I decided to let the worry show on my face so she'd know I was serious. "I can smell the chemical I've been tracking down here. I don't know if the drug's airborne or how it'll affect you, but I can't recommend getting a lungful."

"Plus…" I continued, taking in another strong whiff just to make sure, "...There's blood. _Lots_ of blood. And I think something shot its way through here."

She held my gaze cooly for a moment, her eyes searching my expression for something, but eventually nodded carefully. She reached into her combat webbing and pulled out a band of bent metal about the size of a thick and wide hairband. She pressed a button and it expanded into a segmented metal mask. When she placed it on her face, the metal segments expanded and contracted to conform to it.

After a moment of reformatting, a silvery liquid metal flowed out of specific ports along the side and covered the front of the mask in a shimmering, flawless, almost mirror-like surface. At the edges of it, though, my eyes could pick up what looked like tiny cameras, sensors, and even ventilation along the jaw.

"Alright," Aunt Hannah said, her voice coming through with an ever so slight digital effect, "Hud's not picking anything up right now, but I'll trust your judgment, Amy. I should be good with this, whatever we find down there."

I nodded in agreement. "I should probably go first then, just in case."

"Just in case?" she questioned.

"Well, I'm the tank here. You're the squishy ranger."

"What?"

"It's…" I sighed. "I'm the regenerative brute/striker...thing. You're mostly just a bog-standard human that's also the 3rd most powerful blaster in the world. I can get shot in the face and make the guy who did it eat the bullet. You still need bandaids."

"...Fair point." She stepped back and allowed me to take point with a sweep of her arm.

I nodded my appreciation. "Thank you for letting me be the bullet sponge."

She swiped her hand along the jaw of her mask, and the liquid metal face of it rippled. Aunt Hannah's smile appeared, not merely a facsimile or a basic smile, but picture-perfect replication of Aunt Hannah's smile with everything from her dimples to the pores of her skin appearing in the silvery surface. It was there for a second, the equivalent of her flashing a grin at me I supposed, and then it was gone, the mask once again a featureless matte grey surface.

I just shook my head and started moving down the hall.

At this point, I was feeling pretty much numb regarding Tinker shock. It was always such a surprise whenever I was hit so bluntly with how advanced Ladon was by now. Most people couldn't afford the good stuff from them, which wasn't surprising considering they were basically a Tinker/Supergenius STEM think tank that also happened to work to turn a profit. The Government, on the other hand, was their biggest customer. People like the PRT and DoD got all the fanciest toys from Hero.

I'd heard it said that compared to the rest of us, they were working with tech at least 30 years ahead of our time. A gap that was growing every day. The fact that so much of it required an infrastructure base that didn't yet exist on a scale to feed their needs was probably the only reason everyone _wasn't_ running around with Disintegrators and such.

 _Which reminds me…_

"Hey, Aunt Hannah?" I spoke up. I didn't bother turning around while I kept up my pace, I didn't need to when I had eyes in the back of my head. "How does it feel to be able to pull more tinker tech out of your ass than Armsmaster?"

She twitched in that way which meant she was suppressing a snort. "It's not tinker tech," she pointed out with a smile in her voice.

"I mean." I shrugged. "It's technology made by a tinker so…?"

"Not by themselves," she countered, "it's Ladon tech, made by the best human minds and tinkers working together to break boundaries."

"Ok, yeah, that's the company tagline, but I mean...come on."

"Well, as far as my power is concerned, it's _not_ tinker tech."

"A disintegrator rifle isn't tinker tech?"

"If you want, I could spend the next five days explaining in painful detail how each part was manufactured and it's function in disintegrating any and all biological material," Aunt Hannah answered dryly, summoning the weapon with a swirl of green light.

"No thanks." I cringe, gently nudging the barrel away from me." Getting half vaporized was more than enough detail for me."

Aunt Hannah was quiet for a moment, probably for a wince. "Sorry about that, again. Are you sure you're alright, Amy?"

"It's...well, it's what I get for trying to shoggoth all my problems." I tried to shrug it off. "I'm sorry for ambushing you like that."

She nodded, and for a long moment there was almost total silence. Just the sound of our feet plodding along the long sloping hall to keep us company. As comfortable as it was, something about it felt off, like it had come on the wrong beat or it was out of line with the script. I kept wanting to say something else to fill the silence, but it always felt like it'd been too long since I'd said _anything_ and I couldn't just pick up where I left off without being awkward.

 _And what if Aunt Hannah wants the silence?_ I thought, chewing my bottom lip where she couldn't see me fidget just to make myself feel better. _I mean, she's the professional here. Silence probably makes sense for all that tactical stuff._

"...You know…" Aunt Hannah eventually said, breaking me out of my thoughts.

I struggled not to whirl around with my jaw slack and go "Huh?"

Instead, I just twisted my head so I could look at her from the corner of my human eyes.

She tapped her mask again, a faint smirk briefly appeared, "Armsmaster _does_ love to whine about all the toys I can pull out."

I chuckled. "That's hilarious. I can already imagine the salty Armsmaster mem-"

A tile shifted under me.

 _Click_

Then the world went blank.

/-|-\

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 _A/n: Right, so again, sorry for the delay._

 _And I'm sorry for how sparse this chapter is. It was supposed to be roughly twice as long, but I've been working on it for more than two months, and I realized that this is the end of February right here._

 _This is as much to get something out there as it is for me to get some kind of momentum in my writing for Progenitor again._

 _So I'm sorry this is all I got._

 _However, the good news is that the next chapter is...well, it's at least planned out. I say it's written, and it technically is, but Trav has some points about it that i need to fix, and I need to get the tone right, and it's this big whole thing._

 _I'm going to try and get it done soon, but I make no promises on when it comes out._

 _Again, sorry I can't deliver more sooner, and I'm sorry this whole thing is getting dragged out. At this point I'm mostly focused on making_

 _ **any**_ _forward progress as opposed to solid leaps and bounds._

 _Hopefully, you'll allow me that at the least. And hopefully I didn't miss anything major in my rush to post._


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